Protestant fundamentalism and marital success revisited

Chi and Houseknecht found partial support for a negative relationship between Protestant fundamentalism and marital success, but among 44 Protestant couples randomly sampled from a midwestern community, no over-all relationship was observed between fundamentalism and self-esteem and each of seven measures of marital quality. For a small subsample, subjects who attended the same church frequently, fundamentalism may have been associated with greater apprehension about marital and/or aversive communication. Negative effects of fundamentalism, if any, on marital quality may operate selectively in marital interaction.