Person perception, marriage adjustment, and social desirability.

Abstract

B. I. Murstein's stimulus-value-role theory was extended to account for the relationship of person perception scores to marital adjustment. The hypotheses predicted that similarity, self-acceptance, accuracy of predicting other's responses, and role compatibility would be correlated with marital adjustment. Other predictions were the following: When the perceptual target was the man, the correlation with marital adjustment would be higher than when it was a woman; women would show a higher self-acceptance-marital-adjustment correlation than men; and intraperceptions would be more highly correlated with marital adjustment than interperceptions. The Ss were 60 young married middle-class couples who took a 20 adjective bipolar checklist under eight different "sets" (self, ideal self, spouse, ideal spouse, and predictions of these four sets for the partner). Results generally supported the hypotheses.

Investigating the Role of Two Types of Understanding in Relationship Well-Being: Understanding Is More Important Than Knowledge

“…Instead, the literature has identified four moderating factors suggesting that knowing one's partner enhances relationship well-being when knowledge is (a) concrete, (b) relationship relevant, (c) concerns positive information, and when it (d) emerges in long relationships. In addition to these moderators that are directly related to the type of knowledge, the literature has identified gender as a factor affecting the link between knowledge and relational well-being in that women's knowledge showed stronger links with marital well-being (Acitelli, Douvan, & Veroff, 1993;Murstein & Beck, 1972). To examine this possibility, we investigate whether gender modulates the link between knowledge and relational well-being.…”

Marital adjustment, idealization, and conventionalization

“…It was felt that certain variables may operate differ ently in the marriages of men and women. Such a belief is consistent with Bernard's (1972) contention that we can talk about two different marriages for any couple, "his" and "hers. "…”

“…Based upon the work of a number of authors (Hawkins, 1966;Murstein and Beck, 1972;Dean and Lucas, 1975), the prediction was made that both marital adjustment and marital idealization would not be related to social desirability. This is the case for marital idealization, but not for marital adjustment.…”

“…Based upon the work of Hawkins (1966), Murstein and Beck (1972), and Dean and Lucas (1975), we can hypothesize the following; VII Provided that procedures to make it easier for respondents to admit to undesirable qualities, feelings, and experiences are followed, social desirability is not related to marital adjustment.^ Procedures which make it easier for respondents to admit to unde sirable qualities, feelings, and experiences will be discussed in the following chapter on methodology.…”

“…these correlations do not even come close to the size of the correlations that would be expected if a social desirability response set were the sole or major determinant of the variance in marital satisfaction scores. Murstein and Beck (1972) examined person perception, marital adjust ment, and social desirability. They used the Locke-Wallace scale for the measurement of marital adjustment and Edmonds' Marital Conventionalization Scale for social desirability.…”