The role of multi-level relationship maintenance on married couples' commitment

Relationship maintenance is critical for marital commitment. The constant interaction of the relationship maintenance processes between partners constitutes a complex context of relationship maintenance. The multi-level relationship maintenance includes maintenance processes and properties. The processes contain both partners’ relationship maintenance enactment and perception of partners’ relationship maintenance. The properties of relationship maintenance include similarity, accuracy, and perceived equity. Also, people’s subjective evaluation of the relationship might moderate the association between multi-level relationship maintenance and commitment. Thus, this study investigated the actor and partner effects of relationship maintenance processes and properties on commitment as moderated by relationship satisfaction. This study recruited 193 heterosexual married couples from the midwestern US and adopted the two-intercept Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) to analyze the cross-sectional data. The results demonstrated a positive association between husbands’ relationship maintenance enactment and their commitment, a negative association between similarity of relationship maintenance enactment and wives’ commitment, and a negative association between husbands’ perceived equity and their commitment. Satisfaction was strongly associated with participants’ commitment and moderated the association between relationship maintenance enactment and commitment for both partners, the association between husbands’ maintenance enactment and wives’ commitment, and the association between husbands’ perceived equity and wives’ commitment. The findings suggest further research to investigate the mechanisms of similarity, accuracy, and perceived equity. Limitations in theoretical background, sampling, and statistical methods are also discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Human Dvlpmt & Family Studies

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Hu, Yifan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ogolsky, Brian G.
• Kramer, Karen Z.

• relationship maintenance
• commitment
• couple dynamics

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Yifan Hu

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115417

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115417