La Salle Communication Professor Marianne Dainton Receives University’s Faculty Distinguished Scholarship Award

Few human endeavors are as basic - and misunderstood - as communication. Add “love” “caring” and “courtship” into the equation, and understanding between people gets more complicated. For Marianne Dainton, a professor of communication at La Salle, who studies how couples communicate, this is what makes her delve deeper into the mysteries of what we say and why we say it.

“I find human beings endlessly fascinating, and we really know very little about the everyday, mundane things that sustain relationships,” said Dainton, who studies communication patterns in personal relationships. Her research focuses on relationship maintenance in marriage, dating relationships, and long-distance relationships. For her work, she has received the University’s 2009 Faculty Distinguished Scholarship Award.

She is the co-editor of two books, one on relationship maintenance between couples and the other a textbook about communication, as well as numerous articles in professional journals. The editor of one of those journals said she is one of the top six researchers in the field of relationship maintenance.

One of the most interesting discoveries she’s found is that “much of the popular literature out there is wrong.  One of the pieces of advice that appears in (the media) suggests that relationships succeed because of complete openness and honesty.  In dozens of studies I've actually found a negative relationship between openness and relationship satisfaction,” she said. “This doesn't mean that being open leads to dissatisfaction, but that the relationship between communication and marital happiness is much more complex than people know.  In fact, I urge a great deal of caution in deciding to communicate something - some things are better left unsaid.”

Dainton became interested in this field during her first semester as a master's degree student. One of her professors was working on what turned out to be one of the first published studies on relationship maintenance.  “Nearly every class she came in excited about the data she had just analyzed, and her enthusiasm was contagious,” said Dainton. “She was impressed with my work that semester and invited me to join her research team.”
In presenting the Scholarship Award, La Salle University Provost Dr. Richard Nigro said, “The awardees’ vita indicates she has a total of 71 publications, including conference papers, and was

a single or first author of 13 of 16 published articles. She has a long-term, planned and purposeful record of scholarship in her primary research area of relationship maintenance, and has been noted as one of the six recognized scholars in the area of relational maintenance. She regularly collaborates with colleagues in her research endeavors and has also mentored student researchers with some of these collaborations, having resulted in publication or conference presentations. It is a pleasure to present the 2009 Faculty Distinguished Scholarship Award to Professor of Communication, Dr. Marianne Dainton.”

A member of the La Salle faculty since 1996, Dainton is the co-author of Applying Communication Theory for Professional Life, with La Salle Communication professor Elaine Zelley. They have completed a second edition of their book. Also, Dainton and Lynne Texter, Chair of La Salle’s Communication Department, are working on a new textbook on communication research methods.

Dainton has also published articles in  Communication Monographs, the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Family Relations, Western Journal of Communication, Communication Quarterly, Communication Reports, and Communication Research Reports, as well as numerous book chapters.

She has recently started a research team to develop a measure of varying beliefs about the function of communication. “Different people have different beliefs about the purpose of communication,” she said. “Some people believe that communication is the means to share whatever is in your head with the rest of the world; some people believe that is a rule-based system full of things you should and shouldn't do; and some people believe that communication is a game in which you have to figure out how to send a message in a way that is most appealing to the other person.  Your beliefs influence how you respond to things and what you say.”

This semester she is also working with an undergraduate student, Maria Muscara, on perceptions of hand holding in the college population.