Women's Romance Novel Readership: Motivations, Expectations, and Relationship Satisfaction

Publication year
2007
Comment

This was not published. It was a paper presented at Előadás: Annual meeting of the NCA 93rd Annual Convention. There is an abstract on the webpage of the National Communication Association:

This study investigates women’s reasons for reading romance novels, romantic relationship expectations, and romantic relationship satisfaction. Major findings include: (a) women most frequently read romance novels for escape or relaxation, (b) reading novels for relationship substitution predicts less satisfaction in romantic relationships, (c) for women with low relationship expectations, reading romance novels led to increased relationship satisfaction, and (d), for women with high relationship expectations, reading novels led to decreased relationship satisfaction.

I believe it may be drawing on Long's MA thesis, completed the previous year. This paper has been cited, including by John Best in “To Teach and Delight: The Varieties of Learning From Fiction” in the Review of General Psychology:

Long (2007) observed a significant interaction effect between romance novel readership, relationship expectations, and relationship satisfaction. Specifically, for women who had less idealistic expectations of romance quality, reading romance novels was associated with higher levels of relationship satisfaction. However, the opposite was true for women with more idealistic expectations of relationship quality. For those readers, reading fiction was associated with lower reported relationship satisfaction.

Topic