PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARITAL COMPATI- BILITY*! From the Department of Psychology, Stanford Unwersiiy LEWIS M . TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER* I NATURE OF THE INVESTIGATION Studies in the psychology of personality have suggested the pos- sibility that particular combinations of personality traits in husband and wife may be favorable or unfavorable to marital happiness. That some combinations must be more favorable than others has been accepted as a reasonable hypothesis by practically everyone to whom we have put the question. Although opinions differ as to the prob- able effect of any specific combination, there are certain combinations which a majority of people seem inclined to regard as more likely than others to affect the success of a marriage. For example, one would hardly expect a man and woman, both highly neurotic, to achieve a very high order of marital happiness. The mating of ex- tremely dominant or extremely introverted personalities seems also generally to be regarded as unpromising. Literature affords many examples of the difficulty which extroverts and introverts encounter in trying to understand or appreciate one another. Between a Hamlet or Tasso and the extreme extrovert of politics or business Shakespeare and Goethe have thought to find an impenetrable wall. But are the dramatic cases depicted by poets •Accepted for publication by Carl Murchiaon of the Editorial Board. 'This study was made possible by a grant from the Committee for Re- search on Problems of Sex, of the National Research Council. 'The senior author is responsible for the plan of the study, for supervising the collection of data, and for the methods used in treating results. Dr. Buttenwieser supervised the clerical and statistical work and gave invalu- able assistance throughout tn connection with the treatment of the data. The report was written by the senior author, with the assistance of Wini- fred B. Johnson, The field work was done by Mrs. Ruth Wilson and Mrs. Ann Bent, to both of whom the authors are greatly indebted for the skill and devotion with which their difficult task was performed. Mrs. Linna Culver gave expert assistance in preparing the data for Hollerith treat- ment. 143
Transcript
PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARITAL COMPATI-BILITY*!
From the Department of Psychology, Stanford Unwersiiy
LEWIS M . TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER*
I
NATURE OF THE INVESTIGATION
Studies in the psychology of personality have suggested the pos-sibility that particular combinations of personality traits in husbandand wife may be favorable or unfavorable to marital happiness. Thatsome combinations must be more favorable than others has beenaccepted as a reasonable hypothesis by practically everyone to whomwe have put the question. Although opinions differ as to the prob-able effect of any specific combination, there are certain combinationswhich a majority of people seem inclined to regard as more likelythan others to affect the success of a marriage. For example, onewould hardly expect a man and woman, both highly neurotic, toachieve a very high order of marital happiness. The mating of ex-tremely dominant or extremely introverted personalities seems alsogenerally to be regarded as unpromising.
Literature affords many examples of the difficulty which extrovertsand introverts encounter in trying to understand or appreciate oneanother. Between a Hamlet or Tasso and the extreme extrovert ofpolitics or business Shakespeare and Goethe have thought to find animpenetrable wall. But are the dramatic cases depicted by poets
•Accepted for publication by Carl Murchiaon of the Editorial Board.'This study was made possible by a grant from the Committee for Re-
search on Problems of Sex, of the National Research Council.'The senior author is responsible for the plan of the study, for supervising
the collection of data, and for the methods used in treating results. Dr.Buttenwieser supervised the clerical and statistical work and gave invalu-able assistance throughout tn connection with the treatment of the data.The report was written by the senior author, with the assistance of Wini-fred B. Johnson, The field work was done by Mrs. Ruth Wilson and Mrs.Ann Bent, to both of whom the authors are greatly indebted for the skilland devotion with which their difficult task was performed. Mrs. LinnaCulver gave expert assistance in preparing the data for Hollerith treat-ment.
143
144 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
and novelists typical? In his autobiography an eminent psychologistwho describes himself as markedly introverted finds cause for re-joicing in the extroverted qualities of a wife who has smoothed hissocial contacts and in other ways helped to make the marriage ahighly successful one (4). Similar arguments could be offered infavor of the mating of dominant with submissive or of social withnon-social.
There are many other types of attitudes and interests which mightconceivably have a bearing upon marital compatibility. Among theseare mental masculinity or femininity, interest maturity, aestheticpreferences, religious beliefs, and both intellectual and vocationalinterests. A census of opinion would doubtless disclose every varietyof belief with regard to what would constitute maritally favorableand unfavorable combinations of such traits, for it is possible to findamong one's acquaintances particular instances in favor of almost anytype of mating.
Progress in this field will depend largely upon the reliable de-termination of specific personality traits possessed by happily andunhappily married couples. At present not only is the "measure-ment" of personality far from objective, but there is no general agree-ment with respect to what constellations of traits exist or how theyshow themselves in every-day behavior. It is notorious that currentpersonality tests can not be uncritically accepted as measures of thetraits they purport to measure. The low intercorrelations of thenumerous tests of introversion-extroversion offer a warning example.The Bernreuter Personality Inventory, originally presented as ameasure of four traits, named hy the author "neurotic tendency,""self sufficiency," "introversion," and "dominance," has been fac-tored by Flanagan (2) into two components which together accountfor 96 per cent of the loadings. These have been named by theauthor "social maladjustment," accounting for 78 per cent and"seclusiveness," accounting for 18 per cent. Bernreuter himselfhad already shown that his "neurotic tendency" and "introversion"are practically identical, and that "dominance" greatly overlaps "selfsuflRciency." More recently Farnsworth (in an unpublished study)has found a correlation of .94 between Bernreuter's "neurotictendency" and Flanagan's "social maladjustment." Evidently it isone thing to demonstrate the existence of a particular trait andquite another thing to name it. For the present it would be preferable
PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 145
to use arbitrary symbols instead of names; the choice of the namewould be much easier after thorough-going investigation of the trait'ssignificance for the total personality in life situations.
The facts just given with respect to the Bernreuter test havebeen paralleled by factor analyses of other personality measures. TheStrong test of occupational interests, scored by the author for somethirty different occupations, has been factored both by Thurstone (8)and by Strong (7) into four or five components. Similarly, "mentalmasculinity-femininity" and "interest maturity" are not to be thoughtof as necessarily single traits simply because they are named asthough they were. These terms, however, would seem to have aspecial justification in the empirical procedures by which the testsin question were derived. The M-F and I-M tests are composed ofitems which trial has shown to yield, respectively, sex and age difFer-ences; whatever components they may have, they are in fact measuresof M-F and I-M differences.
Notwithstanding the unsatisfactory status of personality measure-ment we have considered it worth while to ascertain what relation-ships, if any, the scores obtained on leading personality tests bearto marital compatibility, even if the final interpretation of such rela-tionships should have to await further investigation. Choice of thetests to be used was based upon the known merits of tests available,on the amount of research which had been done that would aid inthe interpretation of scores, and on various practical considerationssuch as plausibility of the tests to those taking them, time limits fortesting, ease of administration, etc.
The Strong Vocational Interest Blank and the Bernreuter Per-sonality Inventory were finally selected. The latter was scored forthe four traits originally proposed by the author, although, as wehave pointed out, "neurotic tendency" and "introversion" are prac-tically identical. The Strong test yielded nine scores. Seven ofthese were occupational scores selected by Dr. Strong as most nearlyrepresenting interest-constellations previously disclosed by factor an-alysis. They include the following occupations: chemist, lawyer, lifeinsurance salesman, teacher, Y. M. C. A. worker, general secretary,office man, certified public accountant. It is important that thereader should think of the occupational interest scores in this stud.vnot primarily as scores for interest in the seven occupations named,but as representative of constellations of interests which followers
146 LEWIS M. TBRMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
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PERSONAUTY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 147
of these occupations express in their test responses. These constella-tions are indicated by the groupings given on Dr. Strong's reportblank to subjects, shown on p. 146.
The other two scores yielded by the Strong test were an M-Fscore and an I-M score. This M-F score is not identical with thatyielded by the M-F test devised by Terman in 1927-28 and exten-sively investigated since then by Terman and Miles, but is signifi-cantly correlated with it. For a group of 41 males the correlationbetween Terman and Strong M-F scores is .43, for 62 females thecorrelation is .62, for the two sexes combined, it is .86. The originalM-F test would have been preferable, but its inclusion in the batterywould have added greatly to the difficulties of the testing program.The Strong M-F score, while by no means an equivalent substi-tute, has enough in common with the Terman M-F score to showwhether a measure of this general type is significantly related tomarital compatibility. The M-F scoring key used was worked out byDr. Harold Carter on the basis of sex differences yielded by 114males and 114 females, chiefly of high school age. Of the 420 itemsin the test, 156 yielded sex differences of probably significant mag-nitude, and weights were assigned to these items in proportion to themagnitude of the differences found. The reliability of the result-ing score is .94.
The derivation of the I-M score has been described elsewhere byDr. Strong (7). The main point to note here is that it is based on acomparative study of the responses made on the Strong occupationalinterest test by two age groups, one an unselected population of 472boys aged fifteen years, the other a group of 55-year-oId men in pro-fessional and executive occupations. Strong defines interest maturityas "the degree to which one has the interests of 55-year-old men ofsuperior education and occupational attainment in contrast to theinterests of the typical 15-year-old boy."
In giving the Strong and Bernreutcr tests to couples representingdifferent degrees of marital happiness answers were sought to thefollowing specific questions: (1) Do happily married couples re-semble one another in the thirteen variables to a greater or less ex-tent than do unhappily married or divorced couples? (2) Is thedirection of husband-wife difference significant as well as the amountof difference? (3) Will analysis of responses to the 545 individualitems of the two tests throw any light on marital compatibility over
148 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
and above that yielded by the trait scores? (4) Do the happilymarried individuals of a given sex differ as a group frcwn the un-happily married or the divorced?
T H E SELECTION OF CRITERION GROUPS
The difficulties in the way of assigning a quantitative happiness-rating to a marriage are too obvious to dwell upon, in view of thecomplexity and the frequently evanescent character of the state desig-nated as "marital happiness." No one would claim that a state de-pendent upon so many qualitative factors could be quantitativelyassessed with any pretense to accuracy. It is only when large groupsof couples arc compared, groups selected as probably belonging to theextremes of the happiness distribution, that significant results can besecured. Even then the findings must be regarded as of value chieflyin showing the direction in which significant relationships are to besought.
The procedure chosen involved a comparative study of threegroups: (1) a group rated, by a method to be described, in thehighest third among representative married couples with respect tomarital happiness; (2) a group of married couples similarly selectedas rating in the lowest third; and (3) a divorced group. Thesegroups will be designated by the letters H, L, and D (High, Low,Divorced). The data to be reported are based upon 100 couplesbelonging to each of the three groups, or a total of 600 subjects.The three groups were equated as nearly as possible for age, edu-cation, occupational status, and environmental background.^
It would be absurd to assume that on a true measure of maritalhappiness these groups would be found non-overlapping. Some ofthe divorced couples were probably less unhappy than many of thecouples who are still married. One must also bear in mind thatsome of the marriages rated in this study as happy may later becomeunhappy, possibly even to the point of separation and divorce. Forour results to be valid it is only necessary to assume that the truemean of marital happiness in the H group is well above that in theL or D groups.
*The original plan called for 200 divorced couples, but the task of securingdata was so time-consuming and expensive that the number had to be re-duced.
PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 149
SELECTION AND TESTING OF SUBJECTS
The nature of the tests used precluded any attempt to obtaintruly representative samples of the generality of divorced and mar-ried couples in the localities where the data were gathered. Effortwas made, however, to secure a sampling as nearly as possible rep-resentative of those who had received at least one year of high schooleducation or its equivalent. The study was further limited toAmerican-born whites not over 60 years of age. Details with re-gard to composition of the groups will be found in Tables 1, 2,
TABLE 1DISTRIBUTION OF HuaaANos' OCCUPATIONS
Goodenough Occu-pational Scale High Low Divorced
IIIIIIIVVVIVII
Total*
273518—1532
2933173
IS21
273322
112+1
100 100 100
•In all there were 104 specific occupations given by the 300 men. Atabulation of these (not here reproduced) disclosed no undue loading ofeither the H, L, or D group with any particular type of occupations.
TABLE 2DISTRIBUTION OF ACES
Ages
20-2425-2930-3435-3940-4445-49SO-5455-5960-64
TotalMeana
High
47
23182313651
10039.398.83
HusbandsLow
3111925201192
—
10038.39
8.04
Divorced
21226221413
551
10038.37
8.51-
High
2182229139331
10036.548.08
WivesLow
1013183215723
—
10035.468.07
Divorced
82128161311
I11
10034.528.09
ISO LEWIS M. TBRMAN AND PAUL BUTTBNWIESER
TABLE 3DISTRIBUTION OF SCHOOLING
Grade completed I
High school I (or less)High school IIHigh school IIIHigh school IVCollege ICollege IICollege IIICollege IVBeyond college IV
TotalMean (years aboveeighth grade)9
1066
19659
2514
100
S.652.66
HusbandsLow
911
612847
2518
100
5.722.82
Divorced
11113
165
106
2810
100
5.412.70
High
4116
264
138
217
100
5.332.73
Low
77S
238
207
185
100
5.262.28
WivesDivorced
675
28886
2012
100
5.452.44
and 3. The fairness of the sampling within the limits set cannotbe guaranteed, but this is less important than that the three groupsshould be well matched for factors that might influence responses.An examination of the tables will show that the latter criterionhas been reasonably well satisfied.
Work hegan with tests of divorced couples, as it was foreseenthat the greater number and accessibility of test-willing marriedcouples would make it easier to match a divorced group with amarried group than to proceed in the other direction. First of all,court records of divorces granted in Santa Clara County, California,were scanned from 1933 back to 1930, and American-sounding namesof those to whom divorces had geen granted were taken for follow-up.Names which appeared to be of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, orMexican origin were discarded. Telephone books, city directories,and other sources of information were then utilized in the effortto contact at least one member of the divorced couple. This waspossible in about 35 per cent of cases (loss of 65 per cent). Aftercontact was made the numbers were further reduced by the educa-tional requirement (loss of 10 per cent), by inability to contactmore than one member of the divorced couple (loss of 15 per cent),and by the refusal of one or both to cooperate (loss of 6 per cent).The court files of 700 divorces yielded complete data for only 26couples (less than 4 per cent) and to secure this small amount ofdata cost the time of a capable field assistant for two months, hun-
PERSONALITY FACTORS tN MARRIAGE 151
dreds of home and office visitations, and over two thousand milesof travel by automobile and train. Later, divorced subjects werelocated in Palo Alto and in the Bay region of California by the helpof friends, lawyers who had been employed in divorce cases, minis-ters, and others. These yielded a smaller proportion of losses inci-dent to the educational requirement and failure to locate subjects.The most serious weakness of the sampling of divorced couples, apartfrom the limited size of the group, must be charged to refusal tocooperate. Of 180 couples contacted who satisfied the requirementsof education, nationality, and age, complete data were secured for116 couples, or approximately 65 per cent. Because of the difficul-ties of group matching, and also for the sake of round numbers, thenumber was later reduced to 100 couples.
A much more efficient procedure was possible in testing niarriedcouples. In his studies of later maturity Miles (5) found that itwas easy to secure the cooperation of a large proportion of the avail-able population by the simple device of paying a small sum of moneyto some organization with which the testee was connected. Thiswas the method used in the present experiment. Organizations ofmany kinds between San Jose and Redwood City, California, werecanvassed by field assistants. As practically all organizations areconstantly in need of funds for one purpose or another, it was pos-sible to secure the hearty cooperation of their ofKcers on the agree-ment to pay one dollar into their treasuries for each married coupleamong their members or relatives who filled out the blanks. Ineach case an estimate of the number of couples who would probablycooperate was made by an officer of the organization, who distributedthe test blanks to members indicating their willingness to fill themout. Table 4 gives some indication of the nature of the samplingand of the heartiness of cooperation.
In addition to the above total of 334 couples, miscellaneous couplesto the number of 11 also took the tests, making in all 345 marriedcouples. In most of our comparisons only 200 of these have beenused: 100 of the most happily and 100 of the least happily marriedas judged by information anonymously furnished by the subjects ona separate blank designed to yield a rating on marital happiness.Since only 200 of the 345 couples were included in the group com-parisons, it was possible, as we have seen, to match the three groupsfairly closely.
10. Triangle Club, Seventh Day i^dventist.Mountain View
11. P. E. O. Lodge, Mountain View12. First Congregational Church, San Jose13. Berathea Class, M. E. Sunday School,
San Jose14. Ladies Aid Society, Napa
Total 466 334
CONDITIONS OF TESTING
In the large majority of cases it was not possible to have the sub-jects tested under supervision. The usual method pursued was toleave blanks and stamped return envelope with those wbo had prom-ised to cooperate, with instructions to answer all the questions with-out conferring with anyone and to mail them to Dr. Terman. Thetests used are such as do not require supervision while being taken,provided the testee can be depended upon to regard the task seri-ously and to answer the questions truthfully. Earnest effort wasmade to insure these conditions. Even those subjects who expresseddoubt as to the value of the study gave every evidence of earnest co-operation in filling the blanks.
The most serious danger feared was that some of the subjectswould fill out the blanks in consultation with another person, moreprobably the spouse. Emphatic warning against this was included inthe instructions and promise was exacted from subjects that theywould not even permit the spouse (or divorced spouse) to see the
102950
SO8983
252S25
2S1015
IS15
102442
12S6H
IS332$
251010
11IS
PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 153
blank after it had been filled out. As far as the divorced couplesare concerned we can be certain that there were very few if anycases of collaboration. A majority of the divorced subjects indeedwere especially anxious to make sure that the former spouse shouldnot be permitted to see their responses, and a large proportion ofthe divorced could not have collaborated if they had wanted to. Theevidence against collaboration on the part of the married couples isindirect but reassuring; it will be found in later sections dealingwith comparisons of the three groups: (a) with respect to meanscores in the thirteen variables, (b) with respect to spouse-spousecorrelations in these variables, and (c) with respect to tetrachoriccorrelations between spouses (or ex-spouses) on the 545 individualitems. There are several ways in which these three sets of datawould have been affected if the married couples had collaboratedmore frequently than the divorced couples. Scrutiny of the datahas disclosed no evidence of such influence, and since we are certainthat there was little if any collaboration among the divorced, weare convinced that the data for the married couples are relativelyfree from this possible source of vitiation. The spouse-spouse corre-lations are especially m point, as is also the consistency of the re-semblances and differences between the unhappily married and thedivorced groups in their divergences from the happily married group.
DERIVATION OF RATINGS ON MARITAL HAPPINESS
Who is wise enough to say what constitutes a "happy" marriage?There are so many kinds of happiness and unhappiness incident tomarriage that no weighing in the balance of one kind against anothercan do justice to the complex emotional facts in question. Perhapsthe vast majoritv of marriages are neither entirely happy nor entirelyunhappy, and the extent to which a particular form of happinessofFsets a particular form of unhappiness must be largely a personalmatter. Nevertheless, all will admit that some marriages are actu-ally more happy than others. It is an empirical undertaking to findout what circumstances are most frequently discoverable in marriageswhich are characterized by the marital partners as exceptionally happyor exceptionally unhappy.
Valuable information of the kind in question has been assembledby many investigators, notably by Davis (1) and Hamilton (3).Hamilton's study is especially notable for its breadth of conception.
154 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
ingenuity employed in securing intimate details of sex histories, andthe quantity of factual data made available for correlation with esti-mates of marital happiness.
There is little overlap hetween Hamilton's study and the presentone, for aside from the fact that the former is concerned primarilywith sexual histories and the latter with personality traits, Hamil-ton's method of estimating the marital happiness of his subjects wasadmittedly {and pardonably) rough. Fortunately, before the presentstudy was under way, and at the time when possible methods ofrating success in marriage were under consideration, a news itembrought information of an unfinished investigation of this problemby Professor E. W. Burgess of the University of Chicago. Pro-fessor Burgess kindly placed at our disposal an extensive protocol ofhis questions on which data had been collected for hundreds ofpersons either happily or unhappily married, and later a list of thosequestions in his series which had been found to yield data correlatedwith marital happiness. These questions were separately printed asa four-page blank which was filled out anonymously by all our mar-ried subjects, both husbands and wives, and returned in the samesealed envelope which contained their completed test blanks. The"Marriage Blank" is here reproduced, in reduced type.
MARRIAGE STUDY
We are trying to learn more about factors which make forhappy and unhappy marriages. To do this we need the co-operation and assistance of a great many married people,people whose marriages are very happy or whose marriagesare only moderately satisfactory, as well as people whose mar-riages are unsatisfactory.
We are asking both husband and wife in each married coupleto answer the following questions in addition to those containedin the Bernreuter Personality Inventory and the Strong Voca-tional Interest Blank.
Please do not hesitate to be perfectly frank. You tmll notethat this blank does not call for any signature and ihat practi-cally all of the questions can be ansiwered by a check mark. Assoon as the blank has been received it nuill be placed in a specialfile separate from the other tivo blanks you have filled out.Your identity -will therefore not be knovm to the assistant vthotabulates the ansivers. Moreover, I pledge my -word of honor
PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 155
to destroy the blank as soon as the tabulations have been com-pleled.
Husband and wife should lill out all the blanks io private.Neither should confer with the other in answering any of thequestions whatever, or show the other his (or her) answers.Each should seal and mail the three blanks in the accompanyingenvelope as soon as they have been filled out.
LEWIS M. TERMAN,Department of Psychology
Stanford University, California.
This blank was filled out by; (check) husband ; wife
Date
1. THE MARRIAGE
1. Date of marriage: year. . . . Age of husband at nfiarriage. . . . ; of wife . . . .
2. Number of children born to couple . . . . Did husband wantchildren?....; did wife? . . . . If no children, does hus-band want children?....; does wife?.. . .
3. Do husband and wife engage in outside interests together?(check) All of them . . . .; some of them ; very fewof them . . . . ; none of them
4a. State approximate extent of agreement or disagreementon following items: (Please place a check opposite everyitem.) [Blank given on p. 156.]
4i. Specify other matters of disagreement4f. When disagreements arise, they usually result in: (check)
husband giving in ; wife giving in ; agreementby mutual give and take
5. Do you ever wish you had not married? (check) Fre-quently . . . . ; occasionally . . . . ; rarely . . . . ; never . . . .
6. If you had your life to live over do you think you would:(check) marry the same person . . . . ; marry a differentperson . . . . ; not marry at all . . . . ?
7. What things annoy and dissatisfy you most about yourmarriage?
What things doea your husband (wife) do that you don'tlike?
156 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
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PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 157
9. Have you ever contemplated separatioo? (check) yea ;no . . . . Divorce? Yea , . . . ; no . . . .
10. Appraisal of marriage: (check) very unhappy . . . . ; un-happy . . . . ; average . . . . ; happy . . . . ; very happy
II. THE HUSBAND AND HIS PARENTS
1. Draw a circle around the highest achool grade completedby the huaband: Grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; High School1, 2, 3, +; College 1, 2, 3, 4.Number of years beyond college in graduate or professionalstudyTraining for what profession
2. Marital happiness of husband's parents: (check) marriagewas very happy . . . . ; happy . . . . ; average . . . , ; un-happy . . . . ; very unhappy
3. Amount of conflict (before marriage) between husbandand bis father: (check) none . . . . ; very little . . . . ;moderate . . . . ; a good deal . . . . ; almost continuous con-aict
4. Amount of attachment (before marriage) between hua-band and his father: (check) none . . . . ; very little . . . . ;moderate . . . . ; a good deal . . . . ; very close
5. Amount of conflict (before marriage) between husbandand his mother: (check) none . . . . ; very little . . . . ; mod-erate . . . . ; a good deal . . . . ; almost continuous con-flict
6. Amount of attachment (before marriage) between hus-band and his mother: (check) none . . . . ; very little
; moderate . . . . ; a good deal . . . . ; very closeIII. THE WIFE AND HER PARENTS
1. Draw a circle around the highest school grade completedby the wife: Grades I, 2, 3, 4. 5, 6, 7, 8; High Schoo! 1, 2,3, 4; College I, 2, 3, 4.Number of yeara beyond college in graduate or profes-sional study . . . .Training for what profession
2. Marital happiness of wife's parents: (check) marriagewas very happy . . . . ; happy . . . . ; average . . . . ; un-happy . . . . ; very unhappy
3. Amount of conflict (before marriage) between wife andher father: (check) none . . . . ; very little . . . . ; moderate. . . . ; a good deal . . . . ; almost continuous conflict
158 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
4. Amount of attachment (before marriage) between wifeand her father: (check) none . . . . ; very little . . . . ; mod-
erate ; a good deal ; very close5. Amount of conflict (before marriage) between wife and
her mother: (check) none ; very little ; moderate. . . . ; a good deal . . . . ; almost continuous conflict
6. Amount of attachment (before marriage) between wifeand her mother: (check) none . . . . ; very little . . , . ;moderate . . . . ; a good deal . . . . ; very close
The happiness rating was hased upon the responses to t'tems 3to 10 in Part I. The weights to be assigned to the separate itetnsin deriving a total happiness score naturally offered a difficult prob-lem. It will be noted that all the itetns except the last. No. 10,call for information which may be characterized as factual ratherthan subjective, although the responses to these items are also moreor less open to influence by subjective factors. The last item, how-ever, calls for an appraisal which is primarily subjective. The evi-dence it yields has the advantage of being direct and to the point,but the disadvantage that it is not only subjective, but also morelikely to be affected by wishful thinking or even intentional mis-statement (in case there was any doubt in the subject's mind as tothe anonymity of response). Moreover, it undoubtedly suffers fromthe elements of unreliability known to inhere in all rating devices.For these reasons it was deemed best to give item 10 only a moderateweight in the entire scheme and to make the total happiness scorelargely a summation of the more concrete factual data. The weightsfinally assigned to the various responses on the blank were as fol-lows:
Item 3. Do husband and wife engage in outside interests to-gether? All, 6; some, 4 ; very few, 2; none, 0.
I/em 4a. Agreement on 11 items. The degrees of agreement onthe 11 items were averaged for each individual, and these averageswere converted into units of a normal distribution ranging from1 (highest agreement) to 9 (greatest disagreement). Average agree-ment of 1 was assigned the weight 8, average agreement of 2 theweight 7, and so on to average agreement of 9, which was given aweight of 0.
Items 4b, 7, and 8. Number of dissatisfactions. The numberof dissatisfactions, annoyances, etc., were added together and weight
PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 159
of 3 was given for none, 2 for one or two, 1 for three to five, and0 for six or more.
Item 4c. Settlement of disagreements. Weight of 3 was assignedfor "mutual give and take," 1 for "spouse gives in," 0 for "self givesin."
Item 5. Do you ever wish you had not married ? Never, 9;rarely, 6; occasionally, 3; frequently, 0.
Item 6. If you had your life to live over? Would marry thesame person, 9; different person, 0; not marry at all, 0.
Item 9. Have you ever contemplated separation or divorce? No,9; yes (if subject checks either separation or divorce), 0.
Item 10. Appraisal of marriage. Very happy, 15; happy, 10;average, 5; unhappy, 0; very unhappy, 0.
The weighting scheme used is to a certain extent arbitrary andperhaps no better than others which could have been devised. Theideal weighting of the sub-tests of a battery is the one which willyield the highest multiple correlation between total test score andan independently determined criterion of the trait in question. Inthe present instance this method could not be used, as no outsidecriterion of marital happiness was available. The procedure adoptedfoUovre the principle of internal consistency, which has been exten-sively used in the construction of personality trait scales. Thiscriterion is based on the asumption that tests items which are validindices of the sought-for trait will show positive intercorrelation.Burgess' research had disclosed that items 4fl, 4A-7-8, 5, 6, 9, and 10were particularly promising indicators of marital happiness. Theintercorrelations of these items, and the correlations of each with theremaining items of the test were accordingly computed for the first317 couples who had returned completely filled blanks. The items\a (date of marriage), \b (age of husband at marriage), lc (ageof wife at marriage), 2a (children born to couple), 2b (desire forchildren) showed low and in some cases negative relationships withthe remaining items of the blank. The responses to these items wereaccordingly given no weight in deriving the marital happiness score.The items from 3 to 10 were assigned the weights indicated aboveon the basis of magnitude of their intercorrelations and their hus-band-wife correlations. The maximum happiness score obtainablewas 62.
160 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
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PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 161
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162 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
Table 5 gives the intercorrelations of the items for husbands andTable 6 the intercorrelations for wives. Table 7 gives the distribu-tions of total happiness scores of husbands and wives, separately, andTahle 8 the distribution of the combined happiness scores of the 345couples.
It is interesting to note the amount of agreement between spousesin their responses on the Marriage Blank. Both Table 5 and Table6 give the husband-wife correlations on the items 2b to 10, inclusive.These range from .34 (for number of dissatisfactions mentioned) to.86 (for desire for children). The correlation is only .42 on man-ner of settling disagreements, as both husband and wife frequentlyclaimed to be the one who "gave in." The husband-wife correla-tion is .70 for Item 3 (interests in common), and .77 for item 9 (sep-aration or divorce considered). Item 10 (general appraisal of mari-tal happiness) gives a husband-wife correlation of .65. Total scoreson marital happiness (Table 7) yield almost identical means andstandard deviations for husbands and wives, and the husband-wifscorrelation for total happiness score is .605±.023.
Not all of the correlations in the preceding paragraph are to bethought of as reliability coefficients. They may be considered assuch only in the case of item 3 (interests in common), Item 4a (av-erage agreement on 11 topics), and item Ac (method of settling dis-agreements). The other items call for data which could not beexpected to be always the same for husband and wife; e.g., degree ofhappiness experienced, number of dissatisfactions, regret over mar-riage, etc.
ITEM SUMMARY OF MARRIAGE BLANK
hem Ib: Age at Marriage. Husbands: N 344, M 27.69, a 5.32.Wives: N 344, M 24.54, u 4.44. Correlation of combined happinessscore (CHS) with husband's age at marriage, .O99±.O36; withwife's age at marriage, —.132±.O36. On the basis of these figuresone would have to conclude that age at marriage is an extremelysmall factor in marital happiness.
Item Ic: Age Difference between Spouses. The differences rangedfrom husband 7 years younger (one case) to 15 or more years older(three cases). The median difference, signs regarded, was husband2.24 years older, with Qi at husband .38 year older and Q3 at hus-band 5,14 years older. Correlation between age difference and CHSwas .O45±.O36. One would like to know whether this lack of rela-tionship would be found for larger age differences and with mucholder groups. The lack of correlation found strongly challengespapular opinion on tbe question.
Item 2a: Number of Children Born to Couple. The correlation
164 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
(product-moment) between number of children and CHS was —.076±.036; the tetrachoric correlation between the presence or absenceof children and CHS was —.13. There was no significant differencebetween mean number of children for the 100 most happy and the100 least happy matched couples. Although the presence of childrenmay render divorce less likely, it appears to have no effect uponmarital happiness.
Item 2b: Desire for Children. Neither the responses of husbandsnor of wives, considered separately, showed any correlation with CHS.On the other hand, there was a tetrachoric correlation of .37 be-tween CHS and husband-wife agreement in wanting or not wantingchildren.
Item 3: Outside Interests in Common. The significant relation-ship of this item to nfiarital happiness is indicated by the following
TABLE 9AMOUNT OF AGREEMENT AND DISACREEMINT
Family finances Recreation ReligionHusbands Wives Husbands Wives Husbaods Wivct
H L H L H L H L H L H L
1. Always agree 46 IS 52 17 43 S 38 9 61 30 54 332. Almost always
1. Always agree 572. Almost always agree 303. Occasionally disagree 94. Frequently disagree —5. Almost always
disagree —6. Always disagree 4
No answer —
1337338
441
464012—
2
14263814
413
57366
—
1
2S4025
6
213
563112
1
25392212
1
1
figures for the matched groups of 100 most happy and 100 leasthappy couples (H and L groups).
All of themSome of themVery few of themNone of them
HusbandsH31653
L106022
8
H3065S
WivesL1068157
Item 4a: Affreement on Eleven Points. Table 9 shows for thematched H and L groups the extent of agreement reported by bothhusbands and wives on eleven items of the marital happiness blank.Table 10 gives the average agreement on all eleven items.
One finds a marked difFerence between the H and L groups onamount of spouse agreement. The difFerence is so consistent for thevarious items as to suggest a halo efFect in the responses, for it hardlyseems reasonable that in actual life the eleven factors would be almostequally related to marital happiness.
166 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
TABLE 10AVERAGE OF AGREEMENT ON ELEVEM ITEMS
1.2.3.4.5.fi.7.8.9.
HusbandsTotal group
( = High agreement)
( = Low agreement)
N=317 r
151935527947J71914
H• = 100
1215172023112
—
WivesL Total group H
N = 100
13
—5
2117251711
N=317
161530578447351815
N=100
1499
2433
362
LN=100
1—.111916221714
Item 4b: Settlement of Disagreements. The following figuressummarize the data for the H and L groups:
Husband gives inWife gives inGive and take
HusbandsH44
92
L27
666
WivesH66
87
L6
177+
It will be noted that both H-husbands and H-wives more frequentlyreport settlement of disagreements by "mutual give and take," andthat in disagreements not so adjusted each spouse usually claims thecredit for giving in.
Item 5: Regretting Marriage. The responses were as follows:
FrequentlyOccasionallyRarelyNever
Same personDifferent personNot marry at all
Items 7, 8, and 4b: Matters of Disagreement or Annoyance. Thethings mentioned by the subjects as sources of disagreement or annoy-ance were merely summed; no attempt was made to assign weightsaccording to degree of apparent seriousness. Table 11 gives the
HusbandaH
—1
1089
L10313920
me Personf"
HusbandsH99—
1
L572715
WivesH
-_18
91
The figi
L7
333919
j r e
WivesH
991^
L572613
PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 167
TABLE nTHINGS MEKTIONED AS SOURCES OF DISAGREEMENT OR ANNOYANCE
12345678
Nothing specifiedthing mentionedthings mentioned
or
HusbandsTotal group
N = 3I7 ^
10187802612432
more 2
HJ = 100
4930174
—————
WivesL Total group H
N=100
15213118
72222
N=317
5662
102542011444
N=100
28282710
51
——
1
LN=100
810312311
8342
results for the entire married group as well as for the matched H andL couples.
Item 9: Separation or Divorce Considered. The responses wereclassified as yes if either separation or divorce had been considered;as no if neither has been considered.
Husbands WivesH L H L
Y M — 40 1 51No 100 60 99 49
Item 10: General Appraisal of the Marriage. The responses tothis item were heavily bunched toward the "happy" end of the dis-tribution. Very few even of the L group, husbands or wives, ratedthe marriage as less happy than "average." It is not known whetherthis is due to avoidance of complete frankness in answering so per-sonal a question, to a general pessimism about marriage engenderedby their own unhappiness, or to a Freudian "projection" tendency.The distributions of ratings both for the total group and for theH and L groups are given in Table 12.
TABLE 12APPRAISAL OF MARRIAGE
Husbands WivesTotal group H L Total group H L
N = 317 N==100 N=100 N = 317 N=100 N=100
Very unhappyUnhappyAverageHappyVery happyNo answer
36
69117148
1
———2574
1
I4
52349
—
38
62110160
1
—1
1980—
27
H39
S1
168 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESHR
s s
PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 169
SPOUSE-PARENT RELATIONSHIPS
It will be recalled that each spouse rated the happiness of his(or her) parents' marriage and also the amount of respondent's attach-ment to and conflict with each parent. Table 13 summarizes theratings on marital happiness of the parents. It would seem fromthis table that happy marriages show a significant tendency to runin families. Table 14 shows that the chances of happiness in mar-
TABLE 14EXTREME RATINGS ON MARITAL HAPPINESS OF PARENTS IN RELATION TO MARI-
TAL HAPPINESS OF OFFSPRING
Couples in Couples ioH group L group
Marital happiness of parents: N=98 N=97Above average for both spouses 40 23Above average for husband, below average
for wife 23 27Below average for husband, above average
for wife 17 17Below average for both spouses 18 30
riage are distinctly better if the parents of both spouses were happythan if the parents of only one were happy, and very much better thanif both sets of parents were unhappy. The reader will make his ownchoice between a biological and a sociological explanation.
Table 15 summarizes the data on spouse-parent attachments andconflicts. This table is of special interest in connection with Freud-ian theory. Undue attachment to the opposite-sex parent is supposedto give rise to an "incest barrier" which has the ultimate efFect ofinhibiting impulses to heterosexual behavior. Another alleged out-come of such attachment is the child's jealousy of the same-sex par-ent and the development of antagonism and conflict betvi een thetwo. Excessive attachment to the same-sex parent is also believedto endanger heterosexual development and to cause conflict betweenthe child and the opposite-sex parent. That is, persistence of anystrong parent-child attachment is looked upon as a threat to thechild's later marital adjustments.
Whatever mechanisms one may posit with respect to the effectsof parent-child relations, there is little evidence in Table 15 thatthese have any appreciable influence upon marital happiness. Eventhe extreme cases of attachment and conflict fail to support psycho-
170 LEWIS M. TERMAN AND PAUL BUTTENWIESER
TABLE 15PARENT ATTACHMENTS AND CONFLICTS IN H AND L GROUPS
Husbands
Father conflict
Father att&chment
Mother conflict
Mother attachment
Wives
Father conflict
Father attachment
Mother conflict
Mother attachment
Husbands and wiveacombined
Father conflict
Father attachment
Mother conflict
Mother attachment
HL
HL
HL
HL
HL
HL
HL
HL
HL
HL
HL
HL
N
96100
9599
9999
9998
9596
9694
9693
9492
191196
191193
195192
193190
Degree
1 2
5047
53
5944
21
4834
44
452S
22
9881
97
10472
43
3530
313
2735
33
2340
511
3338
64
5870
824
6063
97
specified, fromgreatest (5)
3 + 5
614
3238
1015
2229
1613
3334
9t5
1624
2227
6572
1930
3853
49
3526
34
3237
87
2830
68
3236
1216
6456
912
6473
10
2019
01
4028
02
2515
34
3826
12
4534
35
7854
none (1) to
Diff.Mean a^^ff
1.661.85
3.653.47
1.571.82
4.063.90
1.831.99
3.653.44
1.842.16
4.043.87
1.741.96
3.653.45
1.701.98
4.053.89
—1.46
1.34
—2.08
1.24
—1.12
1.09
—2.07
l.lS
—1.82
1.69
—2.84
1.65
analytic theory. The conclusion must be either that the theorylacks foundation or that a questionnaire of the type used in thisstudy fails to obtain the facts it seeks to uncover. The latter ex-
PERSONALITY FACTORS IN MARRIAGE 171
planation is conceivably the correct one. It might be argued thatparent-child relationships become so overlaid by rationalization andcompensatory phenomena that the true facts can only be broughtto light by psychoanalytic procedures, never by casual questioning.We do not feel competent to pass on this point, but would venturetwo alternative explanations.
The essential fact to be explained is why happily married per-sons, both men and women, report more attachment for and lessconflict with both their parents than are reported by the unhappilymarried. It seems to us that the most reasonable explanation isthat members of tbe H group are by inherited or early-acquireddisposition a little more amiable and affectionate, on the average,tban the members of the L group. This disposition would accountfor the satisfactory relationship both witb parents and with spouse.
Another possible explanation is that the mere fact of presentmarital bappiness or unhappiness tends to affect tbe subject's reportof his relations to bis parents, favorably if he is happy, unfavorablyif he is unhappy, as though these states were colored glasses lendingtheir own distinctive hues to whatever is seen through them. How-ever, tbis explanation seems to us less plausible tban the precedingone. It could be as reasonably argued that the fact of being un-bappily married would lend a favorable, rather tban an unfavorable,coloring to the memory of earlier relationships.
REFERENCES
1. DAVIS, K. B. Factors in the sex life of twentj two hundred women.New York & London: Harper, 1929. Pp. x]t+430.
2. FLANACAN, J. C. Factor analysis in the study of personality, StanfordUniv., Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1935, Pp. 103.
3. HAMILTON, G . V. A research in marriage. New York: Boni 1929Pp. iiii-l-570.
4. McDoUGALL, W. In Vol, I of A history of fsyckolagy in autobiography,cd. by C. Murchison, Worcester, Mass.: Clark Univ. Press: London:Oxford Univ. Press, 1930. Pp. 191-223.
5. MILES, W . R. Correlation of reaction and coordination speed withage ID adults. Amer. J. Psychol., 1931, 43, 170-191.
6. STRONG, E . J., JR. Interest maturity. Person. J., 1933, 12, 77-90.7. . Classification of occupation by interests. .Person. J., 1934 12
301-313.8. THtrasTONE, L, L. A nfiultiple factor study of vocational interests. Per-
