Familism: A cultural value with implications for romantic relationship quality in U.S. Latinos

Familism is a cultural value that emphasizes interdependent family relationships that are warm, close, and supportive. We theorized that familism values can be beneficial for romantic relationships and tested whether (a) familism would be positively associated with romantic relationship quality and (b) this association would be mediated by less attachment avoidance. Evidence indicates that familism is particularly relevant for U.S. Latinos but is also relevant for non-Latinos. Thus, we expected to observe the hypothesized pattern in Latinos and explored whether the pattern extended to non-Latinos of European and East Asian cultural background. A sample of U.S. participants of Latino (n 1⁄4 140), European (n 1⁄4 176), and East Asian (n 1⁄4 199) cultural background currently in a romantic relationship completed measures of familism, attachment, and two indices of romantic relationship quality, namely, partner support and partner closeness. As predicted, higher familism was associated with higher partner support and partner closeness, and these associations were mediated by lower attachment avoidance in the Latino sample. This pattern was not observed in the European or East Asian background samples. The implications of familism for relationships and psychological processes relevant to relationships in Latinos and non-Latinos are discussed. 1 University of California, Irvine, USA 2 University of California, Los Angeles, USA Corresponding author: Belinda Campos, Department of Chicano/Latino Studies, University of California, Irvine, 3151 Social Sciences Plaza A, Irvine, CA 92697, USA. Email: [email protected] Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 1–20 a The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0265407514562564 spr.sagepub.com J S P R at UNIV CALIFORNIA IRVINE on January 5, 2015 spr.sagepub.com Downloaded from