This study examined the role of moral commitment on newlywed women's expectations of infidelity. It found that women who felt more morally obligated to their partner and valued consistency were significantly less likely to expect to engage in extramarital sex. Religiosity was also found to lower expectations of infidelity. Specifically, moral commitment to a partner and consistency values, rather than religious commitment itself, may account for the association between religiosity and lower infidelity expectations. The findings suggest strengthening partners' feelings of obligation and consistency values could help protect couples from infidelity.
Moral Commitment's Role in Women's Infidelity Expectations
1. THE ROLE OF MORAL COMMITMENT ON NEWLYWED WOMEN'S INFIDELITY EXPECTATIONS Carlos G. Flores Dr. Kelly Campbell Department of Psychology California State University, San Bernardino
76. Moral obligations to a partner (rather than God), as well as consistency values may account for the association between religiosity and infidelity expectations
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80. How much does getting a divorce violate your religious beliefs?
Notes de l'éditeur
Name, mentor, department, and topic introduction
Segue intro a quick intro, explain what people think….
…. about commitment, specifically monogamy
And here are what researchers have found about monogamy…. Most people expect monogamy in their marriage….
And disapprove of infidelity…
However, infidelity, a violation of relationship norms that typically includes deception or betrayal is commonplace every day
According to a study, 20 to 25% of Americans have engaged in it….
An amazing number, 50 to 65% of couples are reported to enter counseling because of it….
And it is the most cited reason why people divorce….
Thinking about infidelity, I wanted to look into commitment
One of the primary theoretical perspectives for this previous study, was Johnson’s commitment model, which describes commitment in terms of ….
Personal commitment, basically the person wants to be in the relationship….
Moral commitment, “ought to” commitment, perhaps due to religious beliefs or commitment to a person..
And structural commitment, the type of commitment that the person has to remain in the relationship possibly to survival factors, i.e. their mate is the wage earner and they depend on that income in order to survive…
with this model, then we decided to look at women, as they have experienced the biggest shift in terms of committing to a relationship from structural to personal reasons…. We expected that with more women committing to relationships for personal reasons and with divorce as a common phenomenon nowadays, women might be more prone to expect infidelity or divorce from the outset of marriage. That is, they might not view marriage as a lifelong, monogamous commitment, but rather something they will stick with as long as they WANT to or for as long as they are satisfied/happy/in love.
And a unexpected finding was that moral commitment was significantly related to women’s expectations of infidelity
But, In order to understand moral commitment, first we have to talk about how moral commitment is further broken down by Johnson
we have values about dissolution, it can be thought as the person’s attitude about divorce; it is also important to note that part of this pertains directly on how their faith affects their perceptions about relationship dissolution, of the three subscales of moral commitment, this one is the only one that has anything to do with the person’s faith
There’s also an element of a moral obligation to others, this can be the person’s partner or someone in the person’s “network”, someone that could be affected directly if the relationship were to be dissolved, and it can be anyone (mother, father, friend, etc)
Finally, there’s value of consistency. We live in a culture that values consistency, to use a cliché; “always finish what you start”. People will more or less behave in a certain way in certain situations their whole life…
This brought on a small problem
How about religiosity? In the literature, religion is seen as a protective influence on marriages, but there isn’t much talk about degree of religiosity and its influence on infidelity, also Johnson’s instrument only has two questions that deal with religion that do not address religiosity specifically, for example; a person may answer highly on the “getting a divorce violates my religious beliefs” question without being very religious or vice versa, so here we are looking at two different issues, religious beliefs and religiosity… Which makes the next question: “does religiosity affect expectations of divorce in newlywed women?”
And here they are, this study’s research questions… (do not read slide, just quickly reiterate the questions)
Discuss where/how the sample was obtained
Segue into results
Model was a significant predictor of infidelity expectations
There was nothing on this subscale of moral commitment (not even the religion-related questions)
The more difficult people thought it would be to ask for a divorce, the less likely they were to expect to engage in infidelity and the greater the obligation they felt for staying with a partner (for fear of letting their partner down), the more likely they were to expect to engage in infidelity
The more people believed that they should stick to their word or keep their promises, they lower their expectations of infidelity
Religiosity was not significant…
So what does it all mean? Well….
First point: This suggests that moral commitment is really accounting for the relationship b/w religiosity and infidelity expectations (In other words, if you are religious, you are more likely to hold values of consistency and feel obligated toward a partner and it is these moral commitment factors that are really predicting whether or not you expect infidelity (not religiosity)
So why do we care? This is why we do…
Thank Dr. Campbell, and the McNair program staff
Just in case someone asks about which ones are the religious questions