PARENTS, PEERS, AND TELEVISION CHARACTERS: THE IMPACT OF COMPARATIVE REFERENCES ON MARITAL SATISFACTION
Abstract
This investigation explores married and divorced individual's use of comparison others in evaluations of their own marital satisfaction. Three comparison others (parents, peers and television portrayals of marriage) were examined in an attempt to better understand the role that comparison others serve in self-evaluations. Additionally, this dissertation investigates uncertainty and marital longevity as antecedents to the social comparison process. Married and divorced individuals participated in this investigation. In all, one hundred and forty-two people completed the Marital Evaluation Inventory. This survey documented their marital status, and frequency of comparison other usage in addition to a variety of demographic characteristics shown to be related to marital satisfaction in previous research attempts. Three research questions were analyzed and two hypotheses were tested within this investigation. Results of the three research questions indicated that married and divorced individuals use their parents, peers, and television portrayals of marriage as criterion to evaluate their marital satisfaction. The tests of the two hypotheses indicate that uncertainty leads to increased peer comparison frequency. Finally, this dissertation provides moderate support for Goethals and Darley's (1977) interpretation of social comparison theory. Such support demonstrates the importance of comparison others to the evaluation of marital satisfaction and offers some explanation for the increase in unhappy and disrupted marriages.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Communication
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