Hint of the Month and News Update - August, 2006
Past Hints
 
How are Idealistic Distortion and Avoidance Linked?

Four sets of items focusing on aspects of individual personality have been included in the V2000 PREPARE-ENRICH inventories: 
 
Self-Confidence 
 
How positively a person feels about him/herself and their ability to control things in their life. 

Assertiveness   
 
The ability of a person to express thoughts, feelings and needs to their partner and to ask for what they want. 

Avoidance 

A person’s tendency to minimise issues and an unwillingness or inability to deal with issues directly. 

Partner Dominance 

A person’s sense that their partner is trying to control them and is dominating their life. 
 

One of our Prepare Administrators recently contacted me and noted that, “…for a number of years, I have noticed that very often a low score in avoidance will be followed by a high score in idealistic distortion. For instance a recent couple both scored very low on avoidance and then very high on idealistic distortion (99% for both!)”. 

The question is whether this is what one would expect when high avoidance is about minimizing issues and idealistic distortion could also be about minimizing negative features of the relationship. The categories are actually quite different. High avoidance is about conflict with partner being denied or evaded. High Distortion is mainly the tendency to give what are regarded as socially desirable or approved answers. 

High scorers on idealistic distortion are more likely to say they do not avoid conflict because this is seen as the socially desirable or approved answer. This pattern is the one identified in the Administrator’s comment above. An analysis examining the relationship between the two categories in a sample of 520 couples shows that the correlation in general is negative and statistically significant for both males and females. That is, high distortion usually goes with low avoidance and vice versa. It is also the case that high distortion tends to also be associated with revelations of high self confidence, high assertiveness and low partner dominance. 

This is what we are most likely to expect, since high distortion is about providing a perfectionistic and highly idealized view of self and the relationship (“we don't avoid conflict, we are a good couple”), but then it is worth looking at their actual Conflict Resolution scores (revised for Idealistic Distortion) to see what might be really happening for the couple. 
 
 Past Hints  Last Month :  When couples ask you "Does premarital education really work?"... 
 
News Update:  

    The June 2006 issue of the Newsletter, the Prepare Diary, is available on this web site: To read, click on: June 2006 Diary    The next newsletter will be posted in mid-December. 

    PROCESSING FEE WAS INCREASED FROM FEBRUARY 1st 2006  
    As announced in the December 2005 Newsletter, we have reluctantly increased the cost of processing to $44 (including GST) from February 1st next year. This is the first increase in the base cost of processing since 1999.  The $35 processing charge was set then and the GST added to this in June 2000, taking the GST inclusive charge to $38.50. Between June 1999 and June 2005, our net costs have increased by almost 15% due to constant increases in the expenses associated largely with wages, printing and postage. Our aim is to maintain the new processing charge for a lengthy period of time (as we have done before). We always aimed to make the processing cost comparable to that of a modest meal for a couple – we feel sure that $44 (for a couple) is still well and truly within those limits.