Introduction: Cognitive structure plays a crucial role in peoples’ interactions and their satisfaction from common life. Standards are among the most important aspects of cognitive structure in individuals. Standards are shaped under influences of culture and life environment. This study is aimed to comparing related standards in the Iranian ethnicities.

Method: This study was a survey design whose statistical population was composed of all above 18-year-old and married people from six ethnicities of Fars, Turk, Kord, Lor, Balouch, and Arab who were born, as well as living, in their ethnicity-specific cities. Using convenience sampling, 360 peoples were selected for the study, including 180 men and 180 women, which makes 30 men and 30 women from each ethnicity. Relationship-specific standard questionnaire are instruments of this investigation, the former of which is to analyze standards in four areas of boundaries, control and authority, instrumental investment, and expressive investment. Data was analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), with the exception of men’s control and instrumental investment areas where, due to necessity of controlling effect of academic studies, multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was used.

Findings: Findings indicate that there is a significant difference between Turk men and women and other ethnical groups in different standard areas. Turk men and women gained the highest scores in all four areas of standard, which shows that Turk people possess higher musts and criteria in areas of boundaries, control and authority, instrumental investment, and expressive investment. Balouch men obtained the lowest scores in many standard areas (control and authority, instrumental investment, and expressive investment), which may relatively be reasoned out by their marriage patterns, traditional norms, and tribe-style subsistence. Arab women gained significantly higher standards than their men counterparts in many regards (boundaries, control and authority, and expressive investment). Standards of Balouch women were, also, significantly higher than their men counterparts in many regards (control and authority, and both instrumental and expressive investments). Additionally, Fars women obtained significantly higher standards in both instrumental and expressive investments than their men counterparts.

Discussion: These differences appear to be rooted in authoritative parenting style, coping lifestyle, or marriage-specific patterns of this ethnicity that had been of influence in formation of their relationship standards. Higher scores gained by women in above-mentioned cases can be justified through differences in women’s cognitive system, evolution of the Iranian society toward modernism, and large-scale roles of women in this community. Overall, findings of the study prove differences in cognitions of the Iranian ethnicities, since individuals of each group have grown up and subsisted in different environments with special subcultures, experiences, and norms whose standards have been formed during years.