Marital social skills in couples from different religious affiliations.

Author(s)

Miriam Bratfisch Villa

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Ribeirão Preto.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC)
• Defense date: 2002-06-20

Examining board members

Zilda Aparecida Pereira Del Prette; Eliane Mary de Oliveira Falcone; Sonia Regina Loureiro

• Advisor: Zilda Aparecida Pereira Del Prette

Abstract

The literature has shown social skills as an important ingredient in satisfactory marital relationships. Social competence is determined by multiple factors, including beliefs and norms assimilated individually or in the community. The religious group has great influence over its members’ behaviors through norms and principles relating to expected behaviors in several contexts, including the marital relationship. In this case, most Churches usually determine or induce characteristics associated to the wife and husband's roles and to child rearing. The principal aim of this study was to verify the relation between religious affiliation and social skills presented by spouses in the context of their everyday interaction and other associated variables of the sample. Seventy-four couples divided into three groups were studied: Catholics, Presbyterian and without religious affiliation. All of them answered to a Marital Social Skills Inventory (IHSC) and to a Personal Data Form. The religious couples responded also to a doctrinaire questionnaire and to another evaluation where they were required to correlate a list of social skills to the Church’s teachings, if they believed there was an association between them. Data were organized in tables and pictures and statistically compared (between religion, between evaluations and between sample). The results showed that: 1) there was no statistically significant difference between groups in social skills indicators. In other words, there was no influence of variables like Church frequency, religious affiliation time, doctrinaire knowledge, association between everyday behavior and Church's teachings made by respondent and what the respondent tells about the Church’s influence over marital interpersonal behavior; 2) In the three samples significant differences were found between respondents of both sexes relating to social skilled behavior, with women presenting higher scores; 3) A qualitative analysis of the respondents’ speech when asked to establish relations between marital social skills and doctrinaire teachings showed that: a) actually most of the relations established associated marital social skills to general living rules and everyday beliefs about marital relationship more than to doctrinaire teachings; b) presbyterian respondents showed more eloquence in associating marital social skills to feasible doctrinaire teachings; c) several doctrinaire teachings were associated to social skills, both supporting or justifying its non-occurrence. Some conclusions were derived from this study. The religion doesn’t seem to be a determining factor of marital social skills, gender seems to have a more determining role. The respondents seem to search in religious teachings the reason for their actions, both social skilled or passive. Besides that, there may be a set of religious teachings (not necessarily specific of one or other religion) which favour potentially suitable social behaviors in marital relationship, although part of these teachings may also justify passive and non-skilled social behavior in confronting situations. Despite of no differences in marital social skills can be attributed to doctrinaire affiliation, data suggest living in a religious community may establish norms and general patterns of living (compatible with many Christian religions) that are also suitable in the marital context, including "models" of applicating the religious ideas to different contexts of life or, inverted, justifying actions based in these ideas. (AU)