A Study of Expectations and the Marital Quality of Participants of a Marital Enrichment Seminar

This longitudinal study investigated the effects of expectations of effort of self and spouse on the marital quality of marital enrichment seminar participants. Self-report measures of marital quality, expectations regarding effort put into implementing what was learned during the seminar, amount of perceived effort, and satisfaction with effort were administered before and after the seminar, as well as at a 2-month follow-up. Participants (147 women, 95 men) attended community-based marital enrichment seminars in 12 U.S. cities. Multivariate path models indicated that larger discrepancies between expectations of effort postseminar and perceived effort at 2-month follow-up were associated with less satisfaction with perceived effort. Furthermore, participants' dissatisfaction in their spouses' effort had a negative effect on marital quality while controlling for initial marital quality, whereas dissatisfaction in their own effort did not. These findings highlight the possible detrimental effect that unmet spousal expectations can have. Implications for marital enrichment programs and couples therapy are discussed.Key Words: disappointment, expectations, marital enrichment, marital quality.Expectations regarding marriage, particularly expectations regarding how spouses should behave, are influenced by a variety of sources, such as individuals' views of their parents' relationships (Gabardi & Rosen, 1992, Juvva & Bhati, 2006), their exposure to romantic movies and novels (Holmes, 2007; Schwartz & Schwartz, 1986), and the culture in which they grow up (Goodwin & Gaines, 2004). Conceivably, expectations of self and partner also may be influenced by participation in either marriage counseling or a marital enrichment seminar. In the case of the latter, if attendees expect that attending a marital enrichment seminar will influence either their own or their spouses' behaviors, several questions might arise regarding the potential effects of this change in expectancies. For example, what happens when expectations of one's spouse following the seminar are not met? Can the ensuing disappointment have a negative effect on the quality of attendees' marriages? The current study addresses these questions.EXPECTATIONSThe powerful role that expectations can play on emotions was outlined by Feather (1969), who suggested that individuals' perceptions of outcomes as being either positive or negative are related to their initial expectations for the outcome. For example, people are more pleasantly surprised by an unexpected positive outcome than an expected one; similarly, they are more unpleasantly surprised by an unexpected negative outcome than an expected one.As with other important areas of life, people tend to have expectations regarding their marital relationships. Within social exchange theory, Thibaut and Kelley (1959) introduced the notion of comparison level, which serves as the reference point that is used to evaluate how satisfactory or unsatisfactory one's current relationship is. Each person's comparison level is a product of both societal relationship norms and the expectations one develops based on personal experiences (McDonald, 1981). These notions suggest that the standard one uses to evaluate one's close personal relationships is dynamic in nature and can change based on one's experiences. Indeed, research has found that one's marital expectations covary as a function of age (Sabatelli & Pearce, 1988), and that relationship outcome expectations differ between exclusively dating and married individuals (Sabatelli, 1988). Furthermore, Sabatelli (1984) posited that a spouse's marital satisfaction is dependent on whether or not his or her experience of the relationship falls above or below his or her comparison level. If an aspect of one's marriage that one deems to be important consistently does not meet the comparison level that one has developed, then there is a greater likelihood that one will complain about this aspect. …