Why do people defend the institution of marriage and related beliefs about committed romantic relationships? Why do they sometimes stereotype and discriminate against single people? In this article, I review research that provides some answers. I center on the role of a set of commonly held beliefs about romantic relationships—committed relationship ideology. In particular, I focus on how system and individual-level factors can help explain people’s motivated defense of these consequential beliefs.
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Martin V. Day (2015) studied this question.
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