Examining Romantic Relationship Maintenance Behaviors: A Prime Time Television Content Analysis and Audience Perceptions of Mediated Portrayals

Maintenance behaviors play an important role in sustaining relational states, especially within committed romantic relationships. Limited research, however, has considered media portrayals and audience interpretation of these behaviors. From the framework of social cognitive theory, the content analysis in Study 1 examined relational maintenance behaviors portrayed by committed romantic couples on prime time network television. The frequency of maintenance behaviors (positivity, understanding, self-disclosure, assurances, relationship talks, tasks, and networks) varied by type, valence program genre, and couple type. Results indicated that comedies featured more frequent relational maintenance behaviors than dramas. Additionally, comedies exhibited more frequent negative maintenance behaviors than dramas. Differences also existed between couple types (married/civil union or cohabitating) regarding the types of maintenance behavior exhibited. Despite interesting and significant findings within the content analysis, the examination of mediated portrayals of romantic relationship maintenance should not stop at simply recognizing what is presented on television. Thus, Study 2 examined audience members' perceptions of mediated portrayals in terms of which maintenance behaviors are recognized and how audience recognition fares in comparison to experts (i.e., the content analysis data). Results show that audience members are fairly accurate at recognizing the individual maintenance behaviors that experts coded for in the content analysis. However, audience members also coded for the presence of maintenance behaviors when experts did not. In addition, participants seemed to have trouble connecting the presence of individual maintenance behaviors to the overall picture of relationship maintenance within a television clip. Data examining how individuals learned about maintenance behaviors, audience perceptions of clip conflict, and couple behavior play an important role in audience recognition and interpretation of this essential relational concept.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication

Grantor dc:publisher

The Ohio State University

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Anderegg, Courtney Elizabeth

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ewoldsen, David

• Communication
• Relational maintenance behaviors
• romantic relationships
• television content analysis
• social cognitive theory
• experiment

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1366118225

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:osu1366118225