Group-based identity accommodation in older adults’ romantic relationships

ABSTRACT

In this study, older adults’ reports of their romantic partner’s accommodation based on older adults’ membership in three groups were examined as predictors of relational closeness and loneliness. The three groups were older adults’ most important, second-most important, and third-most important group affiliations. A two-way interaction involving accommodation based on membership in the second-most important and third-most important groups emerged in predicting relational closeness: Relational closeness remained consistently high when older adults perceived that their romantic partner engaged in high levels of accommodation based on older adults’ third-most important group, regardless of the level of accommodation based on older adults’ second-most important group. Relational closeness dropped most precipitously when accommodation based on both the second-most important and third-most important groups was low. Additionally, receiving accommodation based on the third-most important group predicted less loneliness at the main-effects level. Findings are discussed in terms of communication accommodation theory and identity layering.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication accommodation theory
• identity layering
• group-based identity accommodation
• relational closeness
• loneliness

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Morse and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. As Table 2 shows, a small minority of participants did not provide full data on the three iterations of the group-based identity accommodation measure. These participants also tended to not answer the demographic questions. In these cases, participants usually stopped taking the survey shortly after consenting to be in the study. The small minority of participants who left the substantive survey measures blank were not included in the analyses.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Quinten S. Bernhold

Dr. Quinten S. Bernhold is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His primary research interests include intergenerational communication, family communication, and health communication.

Howard Giles

Dr. Howard Giles is a distinguished research professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His primary research interests include intergenerational communication, police-civilian interactions, and intercultural communication.