Double standard in Relationships

In its general form, a double standard is a set of rules, guidelines, restrictions, or a moral code that is applied more strongly to one group than another. Double standards typically emerge in areas characterized by stereotypes or different value systems, such as race, religion, or gender.

One type of double standard, which may be called an actor-observer double standard, can occur in romantic relationships. The name actor-observer comes from the actor-observer bias, which is the tendency for people to interpret other people's negative actions based on their personality rather than on the situation, while basing their own actions on the situation rather than on their personality (e.g., “I act the way I do because of the situation I am in, while he acts the way he does because of the way he is”). A person in a relationship may consider his or her own actions to be normal, harmless, or nonthreatening, while considering those same actions by the other partner to be very troubling. Some examples include going out with friends of the opposite sex, forgetting to call on the phone, or being unresponsive. For instance, if a wife tells her husband she will call him at 8 o'clock but does not do it, he may attribute her behavior to something threatening, such as not wanting to call him, ignoring him, or cheating on him and may become quite upset. It may be the case that her cell phone battery died, she got a flat tire, or she simply forgot. If, however, the man fails to call his wife, he attributes his behavior to his situation (e.g., forgetting, flat tire), not to his personality.

This double standard may be especially common when one partner in the relationship has a preoccupied attachment style. A person with this type of attachment style is very concerned with closeness and is worried about being abandoned. Preoccupied people have chronic accessibility to thoughts about abandonment and closeness seeking, so many types of behavior, no matter how innocent, are often interpreted by them as a threat to the relationship. In summary, people may hold relational double standards so that what is appropriate behavior for them is not appropriate for their partner.

Perhaps the most common domain characterized by a double standard is that of sexual behavior. In Western society, it is widely believed that a sexual double standard (sometimes known as the double standard) exists so that more rigorous standards exist for sexually active women than men. Sometimes this is given the “studs versus sluts” designation; when a man is purported to have slept with many women, he is given nicknames such as stud or player, nicknames which are considered to be compliments. However, women who have purportedly slept with many men are often given derogatory nicknames such as slut or ho.

Although this type of double standard seems quite prominent to most people, much research suggests that a sexual double standard may not be as common today as it once was in the 1950s and ′60s, when some research indicated that women were perceived more negatively than men for engaging in high levels of sexual activity. Contemporary research by Michael Marks and his colleagues sheds some light on this disparity. One study shows that people in a social situation are likely to display a sexual double standard. This is because when people are in a social situation, they are more likely to act in a way they believe to be consistent with social norms. For instance, the researcher Solomon Asch found that people tended to do very well in a matching task when alone but when in the presence of others, tended to go along with the group, even when the group was wrong. Because many people believe the sexual norms surrounding the double standard to be true, they may act in accordance with them in order to appear consistent with social norms and avoid punishment (e.g., insults, teasing).

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