322 Chapter 9you buy something of which your spouse
disapproves, you have low power in the re-
lationship. By contrast, if your feelings are
relatively unaffected by whether your spouse
approves or disapproves of your purchase,
you have high power in the relationship.
As expected, in families in which the
husband was dominant, men were less de-
pendent than women. This means that men
were less affected than women by whether
their spouse approved or disapproved of
their purchase. In egalitarian families, men
and women were equally dependent. Inter-
estingly, these findings held for only the two
Western cultures, Austria and the United
States. There was actually less dependence in
the traditional patriarchal cultures of India
and Turkey. If the families are more patriar-
chal, meaning husbands are dominant, why
aren’t wives more affected by their husband’s
approval versus disapproval? The authors ex-
plain that the traditional gender roles in India
and Turkey are independent roles: Men’s and
women’s roles are distinct from one another
and they function in those roles independent
of one another. This means that each person
has great control over her or his domain but
little control over the spouse’s domain. They
grant each other this power. If one person
makes a purchase, the other would have little
to say about it. Determine the level of “depen-
dence” in your own and your peers’ relation-
ships with Do Gender 9.4.
One reason that it is difficult to evalu-
ate whether power is equitable is that people
can report an equal power relationship in
two ways. First, power can be equal because
the two people share responsibility for all do-
mains; this is the definition of a true egalitar-
ian relationship. Second, power can be equal
such that one person has exclusive power in
some domains and the other person has ex-
clusive power in other domains; thus there ispredict that power will be distributed equally
in college relationships. However, most dat-
ing couples report an imbalance of power in
their relationship, usually in the direction
of the male having more power (Sprecher &
Felmlee, 1997).
One way that power has been assessed
in relationships is by the “principle of least
interest” (Waller, 1938). The principle of
least interest is that the more emotionally
uninvolved person in the relationship influ-
ences the quality and stability of the relation-
ship. In a longitudinal study of heterosexual
dating couples, the majority of couples re-
ported relatively equal involvement but when
involvement was unequal, both women
and men agreed that the female was more
emotionally involved than the male (Spre-
cher, Schmeeckle, & Felmlee, 2006). Equal
emotional involvement was associated with
greater relationship satisfaction. Unequal
emotional involvement predicted relation-
ship breakup—especially so for females.
One of the difficulties with studies of
the distribution of power in relationships is
that they are based on self-report. A more
creative methodology to assess power in re-
lationships was developed in an older study
and applied to several cultures (Wagner
et al., 1990). The investigators asked women
and men in Austria, the United States, India,
and Turkey to imagine they bought a fairly
expensive product and their spouse either
approved or disapproved of the purchase.
Respondents were asked to rate how good
or bad they would feel in each situation.
The discrepancy between how the person
felt when the spouse disapproved versus
approved represented “dependence on the
other’s agreement,” which would reflect
low power. In other words, if you feel re-
ally good when you buy something of which
your spouse approves and really bad whenM09_HELG0185_04_SE_C09.indd 322 6/21/11 12:40 PM