Citation

Conley TD, Roesch SC, Peplau LA, Gold MS. J. Appl. Soc. Psychol. 2009; 39(6): 1417-1431.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1559-1816.2009.00488.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

According to the positive illusions model (Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1996a), people in romantic relationships are more satisfied when they view their partners more favorably than the partners see themselves. By contrast, shared reality theory (Hardin & Conley, 2001) emphasizes the benefits of perceiving a partner as the partner sees himself or herself. We analyzed archived data from the American Couples Study (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983) to test the applicability of the positive illusions model to gay and lesbian relationships. Structural equation models demonstrated that the positive illusions model effectively explains relationships among lesbian, gay, heterosexual cohabitating, and married couples.