Journal of Personality and Social Psycholology, 1994 May;66(5):870-81

Authenticity and positivity strivings in marriage and courtship.*

Swann WB Jr, De la Ronde C, Hixon JG
Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin 78712.

We 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.

* Reproduced with permission of the APA - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology