Marital Satisfaction and an Information-Processing Measure of Partner-Schemas

Abstract

In comparison with most research on relationship cognitions that has focused on cognitive contents as assessed by self-report measures, this study introduces an information-processing measure of partner-schemas, based on the incidental recall task. Indices from this task include judgments as to whether negative and positive personal adjectives describe the partner (i.e., a measure of schema content) and incidental recall of adjectives initially endorsed as describing the partner (i.e., a measure of facilitated recall of schema-relevant information). Results from a sample of married couples indicated that the newly introduced measure of partner—schemas was correlated with marital satisfaction, and that these correlations remained significant when controlling for symptoms of depression. These findings suggest that the incidental recall task may be a useful measure of partner-schemas.