The effects of marriage stereotypes and dispositions on marriage harmony: The Malatya example

The aim of the research is to examine the effects of marriage-related stereotypes and predispositions on marital adjustment. People generally tend to use stereotypes about another person, group or society when talking about them. Stereotypes are mental structures that hold a fixed, oversimplified and overgeneralized, often prejudiced opinion about members of a group, positive or negative characteristics attributed to all members of a group. Stereotypes are created by society by being influenced by different elements, and they maintain their continuity in the future by being shaped by the current mentality of the society. While there are many factors that can reshape individuals' tendency to apply stereotypes and the stereotypes themselves, the most prominent of these factors are the concepts of common sense and opinion. While common sense refers to creating behaviors by distinguishing between right and wrong; Opinion refers to the public opinion formed regarding the current situation with social change. While common sense ensures that the individual behaves as he should, opinion ensures that behaviors are displayed in a way that meets public expectations in the current situation rather than stereotypes. Therefore, these two concepts have a feature that softens the rigid state of stereotypes. One of the social relations in which stereotypes that emerge in every field of social life are frequently seen is the institution of marriage. In addition, the common sense knowledge brought by modernization and the social change due to the opinions formed in the society cause differences and changes in the experience and perception of marriage. In this context, education, socio-economic level, geography and culture are effective in shaping the perception of stereotypes about marriage in society. For this reason, it is important to discuss how the emerging stereotypes affect people and the effects of the reflection of what has happened under the influence of modernization on the lives of married couples, and to reveal the society's view of the institution of marriage and the stereotypes regarding marriage, in terms of information about the course of the social order. As a result of the research, it was determined that there were traces of stereotypes about marriage in the answers given by the spouses and that there was marital harmony between the spouses. Keywords: Self, Expectation, Marriage, Stereotype