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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Marital aggrandizement as a mediator of burden among spouses of suspected dementia patients | | Author(s) | Norm O'Rourke, Cameron A Wenaus |
| Journal title | Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 17, no 4, Winter 1998 |
| Pages | pp 384-400 |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Spouses as carers ; Stress ; Family relationships ; Married couples ; Social surveys ; Canada. |
| Annotation | Recent research suggests that the single strongest predictor of burden among dementia caregivers is a measure of marital aggrandizement, the Marital Conventionalization Scale (MCS). Marital aggrandizement is defined as a distinct response style by which respondents convey an inordinately positive appraisal of their spouse and marriage, and with a propensity to discount negative perceptions. This study of a sample 56 spouses (24 men, 32 women), recruited at an Alzheimer's disease (AD) clinic in Vancouver, corroborates the significant inverse relation between these constructs. In addition, there appears to be little association between this response style and more standard social desirability constructs (i.e. self-deception, impression management). Furthermore, the tendency to discount negative experience in one's marital history appears distinct from emotion- and problem-focused coping as defined within Lazarus and Folkman's cognitive phenomenological model. The propensity to idealise one's spouse and marriage is discussed relative to the reconstructionist theory of memory and social exchange. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990331216 A |
| Classmark | EA: P6:SN: QNH: DS:SJ: SM: 3F: 7S |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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