“She Might be Afraid of Commitment”: Perceptions of Women Who Retain Their Surname After Marriage

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Publication Title

Sex Roles

Volume

75

Issue

2017-09-10

First page number:

500

Last page number:

513

Abstract

The tradition of the wife adopting her husband’s surname continues to be widely endorsed within the U.S. and many other nations. The current research focuses on perceptions of heterosexual women who violate this tradition. Specifically, we examined how women who retain their surname are evaluated with respect to their marriage commitment and personality attributes. We also tested for sources of individual variation in these evaluations. Three studies were carried out with a total of 1201 undergraduates (912 women and 289 men) at two U.S. universities. Participants in Study 1 rated a woman who retained her surname as lower in marriage commitment than a woman who adopted her husband’s surname. They also allocated her a high proportion of agentic traits. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that both women and men high in social dominance orientation (SDO) were especially likely to rate a woman who retained her surname as lower in marriage commitment. Collectively, findings indicate that women who violate the marital surname tradition may encounter negative stereotypes about their marriage commitment and that these stereotypes may be particularly likely to originate from people with a preference for group-based inequality. Implications center on links between marriage traditions and broader patterns of gender inequality. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

Keywords

Dominance; Gender roles; Human courtship; Marriage; Traditions

Language

English

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