Boston Couples Study

The Boston Couples Study was a pioneering longitudinal study of American dating couples. Launched in 1972, the study initially followed college student couples for 2 years, as they moved toward long-term commitment or breakup. The study was notable for its integrative use of research methods—survey research, psychometric scaling, laboratory experiments, and in-depth interviews. It addressed a wide variety of topics, including the development of love and commitment, power and decision making, sexual attitudes and behavior, and the causes and consequences of breaking up. The study also investigated the interplay of sex-role attitudes and relationship development at a time when the roles of men and women in families and the workplace were being questioned.

The study was directed by Zick Rubin, then an assistant professor in Harvard's Department of Social Relations, and codirected by Anne Peplau and Charles T. Hill, then graduate students in social psychology. Many other graduate students and staff members in social, personality, developmental, and social psychology joined in the research.

The researchers recruited participants by mailing letters to random samples of sophomore and junior men and women attending four diverse colleges in the Boston area and by advertising on one of the campuses. Both members of 231 couples who were “dating” or “going together” independently completed extensive questionnaires about themselves and their relationship. The questionnaire included sections on the history of the relationship, activities as a couple (including decision making and sexual behavior), and psychological scales—some of them developed by the researchers—of such variables as love for the partner, attitudes about sex roles, and self-disclosure. Some of the couples were interviewed about their relationship, and some took part in laboratory studies of interaction. Follow-up questionnaires assessed the development—or decline—of the relationship over the course of 2 years, and additional follow-up surveys were conducted 15 and 25 years later. Some of the major findings included the following:

• After 2 years, about 19 percent of the couples had married, 34 percent were still dating or going together, and 47 percent had broken up. Couples in which the two partners were equally involved were more likely to stay together than couples in which one of the partners was more involved than the other. Both women's and men's scores on Rubin's Love Scale also predicted the staying power of relationships.
• Among the couples who were not equally involved, the partner who was less invested in the relationship was likely to have more say in decisions made by the couple, illustrating what sociologist Willard Waller had called the principle of least interest. The woman's sexual attitudes and experiences were more important than the man's in shaping a couple's sexual behavior.
• The pattern of data supported the generalization that men tended to fall in love more readily than women, but women tended to fall out of love more readily than men. More specifically, women were more cautious than men about entering into romantic relationships, more likely to compare the present relationships to alternatives, more likely to end a relationship that seemed ill-fated, and better able to cope with rejection.
• Fifteen years later, 73 of the 231 couples had married their original partners and 50 of these couples were still married. The best predictor of relationship survival over 15 years was the same as the best predictor of survival over 2 years: Couples who were equally involved in the relationship when they first took part in the study were the most likely to remain together after 15 years.

The Boston Couples Study provided a portrait of American couples located at a particular time, place, and social context. The participants were college students born in the early 1950s. But beyond depicting Northeastern baby boomers, the study has had a significant influence on the presuppositions and methods of subsequent researchers. The study demonstrated the potential value of quantitative longitudinal studies of relationships and provided examples of measurement tools that have been profitably used or subsequently developed by others. The study was also instructive in its emphasis on the interplay of individual variables (individuals' attributes, attitudes, and emotions) and dyadic variables (the couple's patterns of behavior and the unfolding of their relationship).

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