Date of Award

4-30-2020

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Department

Behavioral Sciences

First Advisor

Karl G. Bailey

Second Advisor

Sonia Badenas

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between gender role beliefs and intercultural relationship quality for individuals in committed relationships, and between gender role beliefs and willingness to date outside of your respective culture for individuals not in committed relationships. This study also examines romantic relationships using the homophily principle from social psychology, which states that we are more attracted to people who are more similar to ourselves—this may play a role in the prevalence of intercultural romantic relationships. I used Lafontaine’s short version of the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale to measure relationships quality, the short version of the Gender Role Beliefs Scale by Brown & Gladstone, a demographics questions and lastly questions in regards to cultural similarity between couples to characterize the sample. I also measured individual participants’ willingness to cross cultural boundaries when dating. I collected data through the University’s research pool, as well as through researcher’s social media using snowball sampling. The survey was available in both English and in Spanish to increase sample size and accessibility. I ran separate regressions for singles and couples to estimate the relationship between gender role beliefs and close relationships quality. I found there to be no significant correlation between gender role beliefs and couples’ relationship quality (r = -.047, p = .659) or between gender role beliefs and singles’ willingness (r = -.034, p = .711). The correlation between Gender Role Beliefs and Relationship Quality was also not significant (r = -.046, p = .611). I then ran a Welch’s t-test and a Bayesian t-test (using the default Cauchy prior; Wagenmakers et al., 2018) comparing the two split couples group (different versus similar) with Relationship Quality and Gender Role Beliefs as the dependent variable. For relationship quality, almost all of my variables except religion had a Bayes Factor of less than .33 meaning that it would put me in the mild side of moderate evidence in favor of my null hypothesis. By doing Bayesian statistics, and with this project I am contributing to evidence that people shouldn’t be afraid to enter relationships that are different because it doesn’t seem to be the differences that define the quality of the relationship.

Subject Area

Interracial friendship; Interethnic dating; Sex role

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/219/

Download

Share

COinS