McNulty James K, Neff Lisa A, Karney Benjamin R
Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
J Fam Psychol. 2008 Feb;22(1):135-43. doi: 10.1037/0893-3200.22.1.135.
Physical appearance plays a crucial role in shaping new relationships, but does it continue to affect established relationships, such as marriage? In the current study, the authors examined how observer ratings of each spouse's facial attractiveness and the difference between those ratings were associated with (a) observations of social support behavior and (b) reports of marital satisfaction. In contrast to the robust and almost universally positive effects of levels of attractiveness on new relationships, the only association between levels of attractiveness and the outcomes of these marriages was that attractive husbands were less satisfied. Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages.
外表在建立新关系中起着关键作用，但它是否会继续影响已有的关系，比如婚姻呢？在当前的研究中，作者考察了观察者对夫妻双方面部吸引力的评分以及这些评分之间的差异如何与以下两方面相关：（a）社会支持行为的观察结果，以及（b）婚姻满意度报告。与吸引力水平对新关系产生的强大且几乎普遍积极的影响不同，吸引力水平与这些婚姻的结果之间唯一的关联是，有魅力的丈夫婚姻满意度较低。此外，与吸引力匹配对新关系的重要性相反，吸引力的相似性与配偶的满意度和行为无关。相反，伴侣之间吸引力水平的相对差异似乎在预测婚姻行为方面最为重要，即当妻子比丈夫更有魅力时，夫妻双方在关系中的行为更积极，但当丈夫比妻子更有魅力时，他们在关系中的行为更消极。这些结果凸显了对配偶特质对其婚姻影响进行二元考察的重要性。
