ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationships among married couples' self-monitoring orientations, relationship beliefs and conflict behavior and explores how these variables would predict marital distress. Major hypotheses were: there would be a negative relationship between dysfunctional relationship beliefs and marital satisfaction and there would be a positive relationship between dysfunctional relationship beliefs and disagreement and leadership behavior in actual conflict. Convergent validity is evident in the positive correlations between the RBI subscales and the Irrational Beliefs Test which measures general irrational beliefs. Marital conflict would seem to implicate general beliefs, attitudes and dispositions and situation-specific cognitions and behavior. In view of the self-presentational concerns that intimate conflict elicits, clarifying the role of impression management in marital conflict remains an important area of inquiry. Distressed husbands' higher self-monitoring orientations and distressed wives' doubts about the "normality" of their husbands' behavior do suggest undercurrents of impression management that affect both partners.
