A recent article by the eminent relationship theorist Blaine Fowers in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships has taken on one corner of the enormous question “Is what we believe about relationships within our culture relevant to marriage in other cultures?” In this case, Fowers and a researcher from the Middle East Technical University of Ankara, Turkey, examined the role of positive illusions regarding marriage, yourself and your spouse and marital satisfaction.

“Positive illusions” is a theoretical catch-phrase for feelings which are positive to the extent of being less than objective. A typical means of assessing positive illusions about marriage would be measuring levels of agreement to statements like “my relationship is a perfect success” or partner-specific attributions such as “Everything I have learned about my partner has pleased me.” In our culture, these items reflect how we expect people should feel if they are in a great relationship. In fact, several studies conducted using samples of marrieds drawn from the US or Canada have shown that positive marital illusions are implicit to seeing one’s marriage as satisfying (i.e., all marriages assessed as “satisfied” scored highly on positive marital illusions). This led Fowers to previously suggest that positive marital illusions are based on expectations and definitions of what marriage in our culture is or should be.

However, is this true in other cultures? To test this question, the authors examined marital satisfaction and positive marital illusions using a sample of 56 Turkish spouses in consanguineous marriages (i.e., marriages between kin), 58 Turkish spouses in nonconsanguineous marriages, and 49 American spouses. The authors assessed both degree of marital satisfaction and the degree to which spouses were described in terms of positive ideals.

The results were interesting, but definitely not conclusive. For starters, Turkish marriages, on average, scored about the same for mean levels of satisfaction and positive marital illusions. This would seem to indicate that the cultural expectations of what makes a good marriage are invariant in this test. However, examining the relationship between individual scores on marital illusions and marital satisfaction, and comparing these correlations across culture, would be a more powerful and meaningful way to assess whether invariance is obtained. The authors did not conduct such analyses.

In this study, the authors focused on the mean differences across culture and marriage type which were observed in regards to self and partner-centric illusions. There were significant differences between Turkish consanguineous marrieds and US marrieds in the degree to which they held positive self-illusions and positive partner illusions. Marrieds from the US scored significantly higher in both regards. Somewhat ironically, Turkish consanguineous marriages which on the surface would seem to comprise the largest basis for cultural differences, were not significantly different from US marriages in this regard.

The authors conclude from their analyses that positive marital illusions are culturally moderated. However, again, the more interesting question of how the positive self and spouse illusions are statistically related to marital satisfaction were not presented.

Further Reading:

Fowers, B.J., Fisiloglu, H., Procacci, K. (2008). Positive marital illusions and culture: American and Turkish spouses. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 25(2), 267-285. DOI: 10.1177/0265407507087959

Fowers, B.J., Applegate, B., Olson, D.H., Pomerantz, B. (1994). Marital conventionalization as a measure of marital satisfaction: A confirmatory factor analysis. Journal of Family Psychology, 8(1), 98-103.

Fowers, B.J., Lyons, E.M., Montel, K.H. (1996). Positive marital illusions: Self-enhancement or relationship enhancement? Journal of Family Psychology, 10(2), 192-208.

Fowers, B.J., Lyons, E., Montel, K.H., Shaked, N. (2001). Positive illusions about marriage among married and single individuals. Journal of Family Psychology, 15(1), 95-109.