Working six days a week, unlike five in most sought after professions, teaching is a demanding job. This is a sufficient reason for claiming a break once in a while. But, as you may realize, we are speaking of educational … Continue reading
I reported in an earlier post on this subject that Hawkins, Weisberg and Ray studied social class and marital communication, which concluded that irrespective of the social class, the communicative demands in married couples are almost the same, varying a little only in degree with social class.
Before going into their second study, I need to mention the classical work on communication in married couples done by Komarovsky in 1964. Her research reported that husbands are characterised by their wives as not talking enough, and also at the same time husbands are accused of not listening enough. In other words, wives judge husbands as bad communicators both in sending messages and receiving messages. On another side, husbands complain that wives talk a lot of uninteresting things. But her assessment about the communication satisfaction in married couples indicates that wives are more satisfied and that they just need more communication from husbands (WTF, that’s THE problem).
Based on Komarovsky’s work, Hawkins, Weisberg and Ray studied the spouse differences in communication style and their preferences, perceptions and behaviours. Methodology blah blah apart, their results indicate that there is not much difference in what the couple expects from each other, and that their analysis of how good their communication is fairly comparable. As a condition, the couple indicated a preference for less controlling and more contactful communication style. There is a little difference between what they expect and what they get from each other, but that difference is only in terms of the level of expectation and level of delivery.
Does it mean that being in a couple makes us give up hope for an improved communication from the partner, or does it mean only the compatible individuals are making couples, at least in this study? The answer to that does not matter, as much as the understanding between spouses. 
Bernstein’s research primarily studied the use of language as a function of social class. Social class was an important variable then, and inspired lot more research around it. Hawkins, Weisberg and Ray studied the relationship between social class and marital communication style.
Interesting! Yes, it is, Marital communication style. An issue that most people joke about, laugh about, complain about…such an integral part of our daily communication that it comes as a topic whether we are talking about parents, friends, colleagues and almost anyone to everyone.
In their study, they defined four classes of communication styles depending on the amount of self-disclosure and how open/closed one was to communication. Such classification was supported by theory, so no dispute over that. More than 160 couples (married for over three years was the criteria), from high, middle and low social classes, took part in the study and were interviewed. The interview elicited information about critical incidents in marital life, communicative behaviour expected and received from each other, and also the assumptions they held about what is good communication. The study also involved making the couple participate in a five-minute discussion which would be observed by an outsider, who would, at the end of the session, rate the communication styles of the individuals in the couple. And then data analysis…
The results were simple and profound. The higher the social class of the couple, the more contactful style was preferred and less conventional style (just imagine this situation, makes me laugh out loud). This means that the demand for open communication and high disclosure is sky high in couples from high social class. And even more funnily, this does not change for the couples from other social classes, except that their demand for such communication tends to be relatively low compared to the higher class. This meant that the communicative demands of individuals in a married couple are all the same irrespective of their social class, but that they are at different levels (may be a good news). Even more interestingly, most of the couples felt they deal with emotional issues in contactful or speculative style (that means every problem is solved on fair grounds, is that true?!). Overall, there seemed to be not much difference between couples from any social class in the way they communicate.
Ha ha…
The lesson is that marriage is a contract that demands intense focus and frequent communication, but most part of it ends in conflict while a little part of it remains secret. Isn’t that so true! This piece of research just confirms it.
