Cognitive Complexity and Role Relationships

Crockett's (1965) Role Category Questionnaire was used to assess individual differences in cognitive complexity among 40 couples (40 men, 40 women). Female participants were significantly more cognitively complex than were male participants. Consistent with Crockett's "familiarity hypothesis," both men and women applied significantly more personal constructs to acquaintances of their own gender, and also significantly more personal constructs to liked acquaintances than to disliked ones. There was a substantial correlation between participants and their respective partners in terms of cognitive complexity, which was interpreted within the general framework of Kelly's (1955) personal construct theory. It was hypothesized specifically that the correlation between partners in terms of their relative cognitive complexity reflects mutual sociality in the development of a couple's role relationship.