The “standards for openness hypothesis”

Abstract

This study tests a new standards for openness hypothesis, which argues that the association between avoidance and dissatisfaction will be non-recursive and that the discrepancy between standards for openness and topic avoidance should be associated with rumination (particularly for women), which, in turn, predicts relational dissatisfaction. One hundred dating couples talked about a conflict-inducing topic and completed a follow-up survey one week later. The standards for openness hypothesis largely held true for women, but not men, and only for perceptions of partners’ avoidance. In addition, the more dissatisfied men and women were before the conversation, the more they avoided during it, but men’s avoidance did not predict relationship dissatisfaction after the conversation like it did for women.