| Abstract: | Proposed that married persons would want their spouses to see them as they saw themselves but that dating persons would want their relationship partners to evaluate them favorably. A survey of 176 married and dating couples tested these predictions. Just as married persons were most intimate with spouses whose evaluations verified their self-views, dating persons were most intimate with partners who evaluated them favorably. For married people with negative self-views, then, intimacy increased as their spouses evaluated them more negatively. Marriage apparently precipitates a shift from a desire for positive evaluations to a desire for self-verifying evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved) |
