Social Class Heterogamy, Status Striving, and Perceptions of Marital Conflict: A Partial Replication and Revision of Pearlin's Contingency Hypothesis

A literature search by Glenn et al. (1974) revealed highly inconsistent findings regarding the hypothesis that social class heterogamy, or marrying someone of a higher or lower social class background, leads to marital incompatibility and divorce. Their report is noteworthy because this hypothesis was shown to be a textbook generalization in functional marriage textbooks. Pearlin (1975) attempted to explain the inconsistency by showing that one type of social class heterogamy-marrying downleads to perceptions of stress, incompatibility, and lack of reciprocity in marriage only for spouses who value status advancement (status strivers). The present investigation attempted to replicate Pearlin's findings regarding this contingency relationship by employing marital conflict as the dependent variable. The contingency hypothesis was supported when reported frequency of marital conflict was the dependent variable, but not when reported conflict intensity was the dependent variable. However, the relationship held only for the wives in the sample. The findings are discussed and a revised contingency hypothesis is presented which incorporates the new findings.