On the Nature of Marital Relationships: Measurable Differences in Spontaneous Agreement

The Spontaneous Agreement (SA) scores on a lengthened form of the Ferreira‐Winter Questionnaire of 242 normal and 177 abnormal couples were compared in a cross‐sectional study, taking into account the duration of their marriage. For those couples married a short time, SA did not differ for the two groups. The overall SA was higher for normals, and the longer the normal couples were married, the higher their SA. SA did not increase with duration of marriage for abnormal couples. Both groups had higher SA scores than synthetically matched couples.