Cognitive and social desirability factors in self- reports of marital adjustment for a sample of military couples

This study examined the cognitive components of marital adJustment and the role of social desirability response sets in reports of marital adjustmel \u27t for a sample of military couples. It was hypothesized that higher levels of marital adJustment would correlate negatively with adherence to dysfunctional beliefs pertaining to marriage. The goals of the study were to identify which beliefs are related to levels of marital adjustment, and to det~rmine the •~xtent to which higher adjustment scores reflect the tendency to respond in a socially desirable manner. The sample was made up of 25 married Navy couples. Assessment was conducted through self-report using the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976), the Relationship Belief Inventory ( Eid el son & Epstein, 1982), and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale \Crowne & Marlowe, 19 60) . The results revealed significant negative correlations between marital adjustment and the three beliefs: Disagreement is Destructive, the Sexes are Different, and Partners Cannot Change. For the males in this study, social desirability was significantlJ correlated with reports of marital adjustment. In addition, for the males and for the total sample, social desirability was significantly correlated with the dysfunctional belief, Disagreement is Destructive