Elizabeth Bott's hypothesis holds that the connectedness or the density of a husband's and wife's separate social networks is positively associated with marital role segregation.
The external close-knit networks provide the spouses with instrumental assistance and emotional support outside the couple and they, thus, lessen conjugal interdependence and make for a segregated role organization.
In particular, the density of a network (the proportion of individuals with direct ties to each other) facilitates the emergence of common norms and social support making husbands and wives less likely to invest in each other.
The town group was separated into those with blue and white-collar husbands and the respondents were asked to name the eight women they socialized with most frequently and how many of the eight knew each other in order to measure network closure.
[3] Alexandra Maryansky and Masako Ishii-Kuntz (1991) find evidence that supports Elizabeth Bott's hypothesis by applying it to a review of social relations among representative species from seven genera of Old World primates.