Communication and marital satisfaction: Social desirability and nonlinearity

In this paper two possible limitations with much of the traditional research on communication and marital satisfaction are explored: The failure to test for social desirability bias and nonlinear effects. Fitzpatrick's RDI, social desirability, and marital satisfaction questionnaires were administered to one hundred seventy‐one couples. The results suggest that social desirability bias may inflate correlations between sharing, traditionalism and marital satisfaction. Further, “traditional” couples were no more satisfied than “independent” couples when social desirability is controlled. Several nonlinear quadratic effects were obtained between sharing, traditionalism and marital satisfaction.