To love, honour and overrate

New research in psychology has uncovered what appears to be a self-deception mechanism that lies behind "successful marriages." An excerpt:

The secret, it seems, is to see your partner as a lot nicer than he or she really is.

The latest research, just about to be published in the academic journal Social Behaviour and Personality, measures a phenomenon referred to as "marital aggrandisement".

Marital aggrandisement entails an idealised appraisal of one's spouse and marriage to the exclusion of any negative beliefs and perceptions. Those who aggrandise their marriages tend to endorse items on personality tests that are extremely unlikely to be completely true, for example, "My spouse doesn't make me angry" or "I do not recall arguments with my spouse".

I wonder how they identify/define a "successful marriage"? Anyone who says their spouse doesn't make them angry or that they don't recall an argument with their spouse is NOT deceiving themselves; deception, I would think, requires a more subtle distinction. So, if the article accurately characterizes the study, it would seem that it captures a correlation between one's willingness to blatantly lie about something fundamental in their marriage and the "success" of their marriage. Link

Update: results of a similarly noteworthy study are summarized here.