Abstract
How much attention do males andfemales pay to positive and negative information about their marriages as afunction of their belief that the marriage is either in trouble or basically satisfactory? In an analog experiment, videotapes of six couples talking about problems in their marriages were presented to 121 participants. Participants were asked to put themselves in the place of either the husband or the wife and to assume that the marriage was either in trouble or generally fine. They then responded to 10 generalizations or events by rating the amount of attention the assigned spouse would give to each piece of information. Female participants attended more than male participants to negative events only when the marriage was believed to be in trouble. Those assuming the wife 's role were generally more likely than those assuming the husband ' role to attend to negative information.
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