Implicit Theories of Marriage and Evaluations of Marriage on Television

This study integrated social-cognitive and interpersonal frameworks in the mass communication setting. Although television presents a fairly consistent view of marriage as conventional and happy, we proposed that college students’ marital schemata, or implicit theories about marriage, would influence their evaluations of television couples’ marital satisfaction. College students (N = 358) completed two waves of questionnaires that used Fitzpatrick's (2988) Relational Dimensions Instrument to assess marital schemata and perceptions of married couples on television. Partial correlations revealed that greater similarity between marital schemata and ratings of television couples’ marriage type was associated with higher ratings of perceived television marital satisfaction. Analysis of covariance indicated that this effect held only for the Traditional schema type. The discussion focuses on the implications of the findings for media effects and marital communication research.