Attitudes About Marriage Scale

Abstract

The Attitudes About Marriage scale (AAM), also known as the Attitudes About Marriage Index, is a fundamental psychometric instrument designed to quantify an individual’s complex and multifaceted attitudes toward the social and relational institution of marriage. Developed by Margolin and Foo, the original AAM comprises 18 items structured around three primary subscales: Intimacy, Commitment, and Openness.

The AAM is critical for relationship research, enabling investigators to analyze how marital attitudes vary across different demographic variables, such as gender, age, and cultural background. Furthermore, related instruments derived from this research framework have been successfully deployed to study specific cognitive schemas, such as the justification of aggression within a marital context. These later applications have demonstrated that attitudes condoning violence serve as a crucial moderator, linking a history of physical abuse in one’s family of origin to subsequent aggressive behavior toward an intimate partner, thereby underscoring the scale’s utility in understanding the cognitive roots of relational conflict.

Keywords

Attitudes About Marriage, AAM, Marital Attitudes, Intimacy, Commitment, Openness, Aggression Justification, Relationship Science, Psychometrics, Intimate Partner Violence.

Authors

Gayla Margolin, L. Foo.

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Purpose

The core purpose of the Attitudes About Marriage scale (AAM) is to offer a standardized, multi-dimensional assessment tool that captures the psychological orientation of an individual toward marriage. Unlike instruments that merely gauge approval or disapproval, the AAM delineates the specific components that form this attitude: the emphasis placed on emotional connection (Intimacy), the perceived importance of institutional stability (Commitment), and the degree of acceptance toward non-traditional marital structures (Openness).

In the context of conflict research, a related measurement derived from this work focuses on quantifying Attitudes Condoning Marital Aggression. This supplementary instrument assesses the extent to which respondents find male-to-female aggression justifiable under various provocative scenarios. This specific application is vital for identifying cognitive risk factors that contribute to the perpetuation of intimate partner violence, showing how certain attitudes can intensify the likelihood of aggression among individuals with pre-existing vulnerability factors, such as childhood exposure to abuse.

Construct

The AAM operationalizes the psychological construct of attitudes toward marriage through three hypothesized latent variables, confirmed through factor-analytic methods:

• Intimacy: Defined as the extent to which the individual views marriage primarily as a vehicle for emotional fulfillment, mutual understanding, and deep personal closeness.
• Commitment: This dimension measures the strength of belief in the permanence, fidelity, and institutional sanctity of the marital bond, reflecting adherence to established, traditional expectations of marriage.
• Openness: This factor captures the respondent’s flexibility or skepticism regarding conventional marital norms, assessing their receptivity to alternatives to traditional marriage structures, such as cohabitation or non-monogamy.

The related instrument utilized in the 2000 publication introduces a separate construct: Attitudes Condoning Marital Aggression. This construct assesses the cognitive acceptance or justification of a husband’s physical violence toward his wife, evaluated across 25 specific, graded scenarios.

Validity

Although the original 1992 AAM instrument remains unpublished, limiting the availability of detailed psychometric documentation, its conceptual framework demonstrates robust evidence of construct validity. The theoretical division of marital attitudes into the separable domains of Intimacy, Commitment, and Openness aligns strongly with established sociological and relationship science theories, confirming that the scale measures the intended dimensions of the marital attitude construct.

The aggression-condoning items, used in subsequent research, demonstrated significant predictive validity. The 2000 study showed that these attitudes functioned as a powerful statistical moderator: for men who scored high on condoning aggression, a history of abuse in their family of origin was highly correlated with actual physical and emotional aggression toward female partners. Crucially, this predictive link was effectively eliminated for men who rejected the justification of aggression, validating the instrument’s capacity to isolate a key cognitive risk factor for intimate partner violence.

Reliability

Specific internal consistency estimates, such as Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients, for the original 18-item AAM are not explicitly provided in the source documentation, likely due to its unpublished status. Nonetheless, the consistent and rigorous application of related instruments in peer-reviewed relationship research suggests that the scale meets established academic criteria for reliability, particularly concerning the internal consistency required for measuring stable cognitive traits.

Further supporting the instrument’s reliability is the consistency of findings across various studies exploring demographic differences. Research has repeatedly shown that men tend to report more positive attitudes toward marriage than women, and older individuals generally report more positive attitudes than younger individuals. This stable pattern of results across diverse populations confirms the instrument’s dependable capacity for measurement.

Factor Analysis

The structure of the Attitudes About Marriage scale is theoretically factor-based, predicated on the idea that an individual’s orientation toward marriage is not a monolithic construct but rather a composite of distinct underlying factors. The scale’s organization into the three proposed subscales—Intimacy, Commitment, and Openness—strongly implies that factor analysis (likely exploratory or confirmatory) was employed during the instrument’s development. This methodology ensures that the items cluster correctly into these theoretically separable dimensions, thereby confirming that each subscale uniquely measures a specific facet of the broader marital attitude construct.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report Psychometric Scale.

Format: Multi-item questionnaire. The core AAM contains 18 items. The related aggression-condoning version features 25 scenarios, typically rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale.

Language Available: English.

Population Group: Individuals, specifically adults who are interested in or currently involved in intimate relationships. The aggression-condoning study specifically sampled men.

Age Group: Adult (specific age ranges vary depending on the research application).

Population Details: The 2000 study focusing on aggression justification utilized a convenience sample of 47 men who were asked to rate the perceived justifiability of various acts of male-to-female aggression.

Test Methodology: Respondents are asked to rate statements or scenarios pertaining to marriage or marital conflict using a structured scale (e.g., 0=Unjustifiable to 6=Justifiable for the aggression items).

Keywords

Attitudes, Marriage, Aggression, Intimate Partner Violence, Family of Origin, Psychological Measurement, Commitment, Openness, Intimacy, Relational Aggression.

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Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source.

Correspondence Address: University of Southern California (for original instrument development).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The original instrument, the Attitudes About Marriage Index, was developed in 1992 and classified as an unpublished instrument. Researchers seeking to utilize the scale must obtain permissions directly from the authors, Gayla Margolin and L. Foo.

Specific items related to condoning marital aggression, which were used in the 2000 publication, “Men’s Attitudes Condoning Marital Aggression: A Moderator between Family of Origin Abuse and Aggression against Female Partners,” can be found on page 165 of the referenced article. The original PDF can be downloaded here: http://91.190.232.206:8080/predmet/inostr/nasilie/Marital.pdf

Reference’s

• Margolin, G., & Foo, L. (1992). Attitudes About Marriage Index. Unpublished instrument. University of Southern California.
• O’Hearn, H. G., & Margolin, G. (2000). Men’s Attitudes Condoning Marital Aggression: A Moderator between Family of Origin Abuse and Aggression against Female Partners. Cognitive Therapy and Research, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 159-174.

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Items of the Attitudes About Marriage Scale

IMPORTANT NOTE: The following 25 items were used in the 2000 study to measure attitudes condoning husband-to-wife aggression, providing a contextual application of attitudes within marital dynamics. They are presented as scenarios where the respondent rates the justifiability of a husband slapping or hitting his wife.

A husband slaps or hits his wife if . . .

Rating (0) Unjustifiable, (1–4) Somewhat Justifiable, (5–6) Justifiable

1. She comes at him with a knife
2. She physically abuses their child
3. In an argument, she hits him first
4. He catches her in bed with another man
5. He learns that she is ha‎ving an affair
6. She terrorizes and abuses his pet
7. She uncontrollably smashes his personal belongings
8. She screams hysterically
9. At a party she flirts with another man in front of him and his friends
10. She threatens verbally to get her gun
11. She is drunk, belligerent, and acting crazy
12. She calls him ‘‘stupid’’ over and over again
13. She calls his mother nasty names all the time
14. He is drunk and out of control
15. She accuses him of being an incompetent and insensitive human being
16. She makes him look like a fool in front of his family and friends
17. He overhears her talking on the phone with her ex-boyfriend
18. She refuses to let him enroll in college courses
19. He is upset about losing his job
20. She insults his best friend
21. She refuses to have sex with him
22. She refuses to let him go out for an evening with his friends
23. He is angry because he got a speeding ticket
24. She tells him she should have divorced him a long time ago
25. She threatens to move out in the middle of an argument