META-ATTITUDINAL SIMILARITY AND RELATIONSHIP CLOSENESS

Abstract

Summary.-This study investigated a possible mediation between attitudinal similarity and closeness of relationship by similarities in the meta-attitudinal prioritization of attitudinal issues. Members of 22 romantic couples rated their positions on 22 issues and then rank-ordered their priority. Rank-order correlations were higher for couples than noncouple pairs and, when analyses were restricted to couples' high-priority attitudes, attitude dissimilarity correlated with closeness of relationship. Results suggest that emotional closeness may require some attitudinal friction in otherwise interdependent couples. Closeness in relationships has been defined in terms of a complex, lasting interdependence between two people (4). Similarities and differences between the attitudes held by these two people are likely to be among the causal conditions for initial attraction (3, 5, 6), and therefore, for the formation or maintenance of interdependence. Nevertheless, it is possible that, as a contributor to interdependence, similarities in the priority of attitudinal issues may interact with similarities on individual attitudinal positions. For example, similarities or differences between two people in terms of their attitudes toward a controversial issue like abortion may only affect relational interdependence to the extent that this issue is an important priority for one or both. Even a perfect agreement between two people on the morality of abortion may contribute little to their interdependence if one gives it high enough priority to attend demonstrations regularly and the other does not. Similarly, differences in positions or priorities may influence interdependence only interactively. Twenty-two romantically attached subjects were recruited as volunteers from introductory psychology classes and were asked to include their romantic partners. The mean age of couples was 20 years old, with a range from 17 to 24 years. From the list of attitudes provided by Byrne (3), pilot subjects selected issues which might be controversial within contemporary romantic relationships. Additional issues drawn from their own experience were also added, resulting in a list of 22 attitudinal issues. For the researched couples, each member was asked to indicate a personal position on each attitudinal issue via a 7point scale in Likert format. Meta-attitudinal priorities were separately assessed by having each individual provide a subsequent rank-ordering of the issues according to their relative personal importance. Each subject also completed the Relationship Closeness Inventory (2), an inventory designed to assess intimacy in terms of frequency, diversity, and strength of interdependence within a couple. Actual length of relationship was also independently recorded. Mean difference in attitude position was assessed for each couple by averaging rating-scale differences across all 22 items. Similarity in meta-attitudmal priorities was indexed by calculating a Spearman rho on each couple's rank-orderings. According to this index, 77% of the couples had significantly correlated meta-attimdinal priorities, a significantly higher proportion (p<.05) than that produced by randomly paired male-female rankings (noncouples). This is a