Sex roles and interpersonal behavior in marriage

Each subject's sex-role category was based on responses to a bi-polar assessment of masculine and feminine characteristics. With this method, a separate score is obtained for each subject's level of masculine-typed characteristics (the instrumental, assertive domain) and feminine-typed characteristics (the expressive, receptive domain). The degree to which the subject (male or female) behaves in each domain then determines the sex-role category: masculine-typed, feminine-typed, androgynous, or undifferentiated.

Using a checklist of interpersonal variables, subjects indicated how they behave toward their spouses. These variables, which provide measures of power and affiliation, are related respectively to masculinity and femininity. Together they account for the full range of interpersonal behaviors: from dominance through submission (power) and from affection through hostility (affiliation).

The major finding of the study was that most subjects did not see themselves as bound in the marital relationship by the limits of the sex-role characteristics they reported in the other context of their lives. Marriage does provide a context for a different interpersonal experience and theoretically, a broader self-definition. The specific findings indicate that this flexibility generally seems to be more related to the affiliation dimension than the power dimension, so that the frequency of masculine-typed behaviors is more consistent across relationships than feminine-typed behaviors. This pattern seems to reverse itself with increased length of marriage, however, which suggest changes in the importance and/or usefulness attributed to each dimension.

The system of sex-role classification may include too wide a range of behaviors in each group to assume within group similarities. and it is also criticized for the probability of errors in categorizing. However, it is a vast improvement over traditional measures of masculinity and femininty, and consequently deserve, further attention.