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The Marital Aggrandizement Scale (MAS; N. O'Rourke, 2000) was developed as a couples measure of biased responding. Results of the current study suggest that responses to the MAS are gender invariant. Differences emerge, however,for psychological well-being and self-deception. These results may explain differences in marital satisfaction between older men and women.
Desire will send you back into memory ... for memory is desire satisfied. -Fuentes, 1964
According to Linden, Paulhus, and Dobson (1986), it is advantageous to include a measure of biased responding in self-report studies because participants may distort information divulged. This distortion is not limited to questionnaires pertaining to individual beliefs and perceptions but can also skew responses to marital measures (Edmonds, 1967; O'Rourke, Hayden, Haverkamp, Tuokko, & Beattie, 1995).
Biased responding is defined as a systematic tendency to present oneself favorably (Paulhus, 1991). Although traditionally understood as a deliberate process, this phenomenon has come to be viewed as increasingly complex. Participants may underreport various beliefs and behaviors with limited awareness as well as purposefully distort responses. In this vein, Paulhus (1984) has proposed a two-component model of biased responding. In addition to impression management (i.e., conscious dissembling or other distortion), persons may also engage in self-deception (i.e., an honest, yet overly positive, self-presentation). This distinction suggests that biased responding is not solely intentional but may also reflect a self-protective, psychological stance. In other words, some may choose to present themselves in a more favorable light, whereas others convey an overly positive self-image that they honestly endorse (Paulhus, 1984).
As suggested by O'Rourke et al. (1996), perception of self in relationship is distinct from individual self-awareness. Perception of oneself as a spouse, for instance, may be unrelated to self-awareness separate from social contexts. Following from this assertion, biased responding in relation to one's spouse and marriage is believed to differ from individually mediated response biases (i.e., self-deception, impression management). This hypothesis is supported in research by O'Rourke and Wenaus (1998) that compares responses to the Marital Conventionalization Scale (MCS; Edmonds, 1967) and the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR; Paulhus, 1994). The latter was developed to assess self-deception and impression management via separate subscales, whereas the MCS is the original marital measure of biased responding.
Data were obtained anonymously for this...