Married is Better: Attitudes toward Single Persons as a Function of Their Age

Abstract

In a study of attitudes toward older single people subjects were given a brief description of a target person which varied that character's marital status (single or married), age (25 or 35 yr.), and sex, and were asked to rate the character on a variety of evaluative dimensions. As hypothesized, the older single person was evaluated less positively on social dimensions than the younger single person or the married person of either age. However, no interaction between marital status and age occurred on professional dimensions. Further, contrary to hypothesis, older single women were not evaluated more negatively than older single men. The disparity in results between the social and professional dimensions is discussed.