Conflict and collaboration in middle-aged and older couples: II. Cardiovascular reactivity during marital interaction.

Marital strain confers risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), perhaps though cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to stressful marital interactions. CVR to marital stressors may differ between middle-age and older adults, and types of marital interactions that evoke CVR may also differ across these age groups, as relationship contexts and stressors differ with age. The authors examined cardiovascular responses to a marital conflict discussion and collaborative problem solving in 300 middle-aged and older married couples. Marital conflict evoked greater increases in blood pressure, cardiac output, and cardiac sympathetic activation than did collaboration. Older couples displayed smaller heart rate responses to conflict than did middle-aged couples but larger blood pressure responses to collaboration—especially in older men. These effects were maintained during a posttask recovery period. Women did not display greater CVR than men on any measure or in either interaction context, though they did display greater parasympathetic withdrawal. CVR to marital conflict could contribute to the association of marital strain with CVD for middle-aged and older men and women, but other age-related marital contexts (e.g., collaboration among older couples) may also contribute to this mechanism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive and negative characteristics of marital interaction and their association with marital satisfaction in middle-aged and older couples.

The study examined age differences in positive (e.g., warm) and negative (e.g., hostile) characteristics of marital interactions between middle-aged and older couples and whether these characteristics were differentially associated with marital satisfaction by age. Spouses' perception of partners' positive and negative behavior during marital interaction was assessed in general and following disagreement and collaborative tasks. Trained observers coded spouses' positive and negative behavior during interactions. Older individuals reported higher marital satisfaction and perceived their spouse's behavior as less negative in general and more positive across all contexts than middle-aged individuals. Spouses' perceptions of their partners' positive and negative behavior independently predicted marital satisfaction for both age groups across contexts. Perceptions of partners' negative behavior in general and of both positive and negative behavior in the disagreement task were more closely associated with marital satisfaction for older spouses than for middle-aged spouses. Results point to the importance of positive and negative characteristics in marital functioning across age cohorts and indicate that such characteristics may be context dependent. Findings suggest that, in some contexts, both positive and negative characteristics are more salient for older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age, marital satisfaction, and optimism as predictors of positive sentiment override in middle-aged and older married couples.

This study examined whether positive sentiment override (greater positive appraisal of spouse's affiliative behavior than is warranted by observed behavior) occurred more frequently in older compared with middle-aged married couples and whether age differences were mediated by older adults' greater marital satisfaction when controlling for optimism. Participants included 270 middle-aged (40-50 years old) and older (60-70 years old) couples who discussed a marital disagreement and completed an errand task. Couples provided appraisals of their spouse's affiliation, and the authors coded affiliative interactions using the structural analysis of social behavior. Hierarchical multivariate linear modeling indicated that older husbands and wives viewed their spouse's behavior as more positive during disagreement interactions than did independent observers; in the errand task, only older wives demonstrated positive sentiment override. Age differences in positive sentiment override were mediated by marital satisfaction, even when controlling for optimism. The results are consistent with theories of emotion regulation, such as socioemotional selectivity theory, that suggest that older adults are biased toward the positive aspects of close relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptions of the cognitive compensation and interpersonal enjoyment functions of collaboration among middle-aged and older married couples.

Perceptions of cognitive compensation and interpersonal enjoyment of collaboration were examined in three hundred middle-aged and older couples who completed measures of perceptions of collaboration, cognitive ability, marital satisfaction, an errand task and judged their spouse's affiliation. Older adults (especially men) endorsed cognitive compensation and interpersonal enjoyment and reported using collaboration more frequently than middle-aged adults. Greater need for cognitive compensation was related to lower cognitive ability only for older wives. Greater marital satisfaction was associated with greater interpersonal enjoyment. These two functions related to reports of more frequent use of collaboration and perceptions of spousal affiliation in a collaborative task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment insecurity and perceptions of housework: Associations with marital well-being.

This exploratory study examines the interactive effects of attachment insecurity and perceptions of housework on 2 dimensions of marital well-being--satisfaction and perceptions of fairness. Participants were 148 married couples obtained from an area probability sample as part of a larger study. Multilevel modeling analyses with the couple as the unit of analysis showed that women who scored high and men who scored low on the dimension of attachment anxiety and reported that their spouses performed more routine housework (i.e., prepares meals) also reported being over-benefited. Women who scored high and men who scored low on the dimension of attachment avoidance and reported that their spouses performed more intermittent housework (i.e., yard work) reported greater marital satisfaction. These results highlight the role of attachment orientations in explaining why perceptions of housework may have more or less prominent effects on marital well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Collaborative coping and daily mood in couples dealing with prostate cancer.

Collaborative coping (i.e., spouses pooling resources and problem solving jointly) may be associated with better daily mood because of heightened perceptions of efficacy in coping with stressful events. The study examined the daily processes of collaborative coping (individuals' perceptions that the spouse collaborated), perceived coping effectiveness (ratings of how well they dealt with the event), and mood (i.e., Positive and Negative Affect Scale) across 14 days in 57 older couples coping with stressors involving the husband's prostate cancer and daily life in general. In hierarchical multivariate linear models, collaborative coping was associated with more positive same-day mood for both husbands and wives and less negative mood for wives only. These associations were partially mediated by heightened perceptions of coping effectiveness. Exploratory analyses revealed that collaborative coping was more frequent among wives who performed more poorly on cognitive tests and couples who reported greater marital satisfaction and more frequently using collaboration to make decisions. The results suggest that older couples may benefit from collaborative coping in dealing with problems surrounding illness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Matters of the variable heart: Respiratory sinus arrhythmia response to marital interaction and associations with marital quality.

Maintenance of relationship quality requires self-regulation of emotion and social behavior, and women often display greater effort in this regard than do men. Furthermore, such efforts can deplete the limited capacity for self-regulation. In recent models of self-regulation, resting level of respiratory sinus arrhythmia, quantified as high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), is an indicator of self-regulatory capacity, whereas transient increases in HF-HRV reflect self-regulatory effort. To test these hypotheses in marriage, 114 young couples completed measures of marital quality and a positive, neutral, or negative initial marital task, preceded and followed by resting baseline assessments of HF-HRV. Couples then discussed a current marital disagreement. Resting HF-HRV was correlated with marital quality, suggesting that capacity for self-regulation is associated with adaptive functioning in close relationships. For women but not men, the negative initial task produced a decrease in resting HF-HRV. This effect was mediated by the husbands' negative affect response to the task and their ratings of wives as controlling and directive. When the subsequent disagreement discussion followed the negative initial task, women displayed increased HF-HRV during the discussion but a decrease when it followed the neutral or positive task. The valence of the initial task had no effect on men's HF-HRV during disagreement. Negative marital interactions can reduce women's resting HF-HRV, with potentially adverse health consequences. Women's reduced health benefit from marriage might reflect the depleting effects on self-regulatory capacity of their greater efforts to manage relationship quality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moderators of the link between marital hostility and change in spouses’ depressive symptoms.

This study examined the moderating roles of marital warmth and recent life events in the association between observed marital hostility and changes in spouses’ depressive symptoms over 3 years. Using the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM), structural equation models (N = 416 couples) suggested that husbands’ marital hostility was significantly related to increases in wives’ depressive symptoms. Moderator analyses showed that husbands’ warmth and wives’ warmth moderate the association between marital hostility and change in wives’ depressive symptoms. The association between husbands’ hostility and increases in wives’ depressive symptoms was stronger under conditions of lower levels of husbands’ warmth than under conditions of higher levels of husbands’ warmth. This same pattern was found for wives’ warmth. Regarding life events, the association between wives’ hostility and increases in husbands’ depressive symptoms was stronger for couples with more recent life events than for couples with fewer recent life events. Practical and empirical implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental family processes and interparental conflict: Patterns of microlevel influences.

Although there are frequent calls for the study of effects of children on families and mutual influence processes within families, little empirical progress has been made. We address these questions at the level of microprocesses during marital conflict, including children's influence on marital conflict and parents' influence on each other. Participants were 111 cohabiting couples with a child (55 male, 56 female) age 8–16 years. Data were drawn from parents' diary reports of interparental conflict over 15 days and were analyzed with dynamic systems modeling tools. Child emotions and behavior during conflicts were associated with interparental positivity, negativity, and resolution at the end of the same conflicts. For example, children's agentic behavior was associated with more marital conflict resolution, whereas child negativity was linked with more marital negativity. Regarding parents' influence on each other, among the findings, husbands' and wives' influence on themselves from one conflict to the next was indicated, and total number of conflicts predicted greater influence of wives' positivity on husbands' positivity. Contributions of these findings to the understanding of developmental family processes are discussed, including implications for advanced understanding of interrelations between child and adult functioning and development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The psychophysiology of adult attachment relationships: Autonomic reactivity in marital and premarital interactions.

To better understand the origins of autonomic reactivity during marital interactions, this study examined the psychophysiological profiles of prototypically secure (vs. insecure) and deactivating (vs. hyperactivating) adults while they talked about areas of disagreement with their (pre)marital partners. Adults who idealized their caregivers and/or normalized harsh childhood experiences during the Adult Attachment Interview (i.e., deactivating adults) manifested heightened electrodermal reactivity, a sign of emotional inhibition, while attempting to resolve conflict in their relationships, whereas individuals who became angrily or passively caught up while discussing their early lives (i.e., hyperactivating adults) later showed increases in heart rate while conversing with their partners, suggesting behavioral activation. In contrast, security was associated with low levels of electrodermal change from baseline in the context of this normatively mild marital stressor. Results were generally consistent for 40 younger engaged and 40 mature married couples. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relations of Husbands' and Wives' Dysphoria to Marital Conflict Resolution Strategies.

This study investigated relations between spouses' dysphoria and constructive and destructive emotions and tactics displayed by husbands and wives throughout marital conflicts. Behavioral observations were made of 267 couples' interactions during marital conflict resolution tasks. Husbands' and wives' dysphoria levels were related to particular negative marital conflict expressions and the absence of positive strategies, even after taking into account couples' marital satisfaction and their partners' levels of dysphoria. Moreover, in comparison with wives' dysphoria, husbands' dysphoria was associated with more pervasive impairments in couples" conflict strategies evident in multiple contexts of conflict resolution, including discussion of relatively minor sources of disagreement. Implications for the treatment of depressed or maritally discordant couples are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is marital discord taxonic and can taxonic status be assessed reliably? Results from a national, representative sample of married couples.

Addressing potential weaknesses in an earlier investigation, the authors examined the latent structure of marital discord using 4 product indicators from the Marital Satisfaction Inventory-Revised (Snyder, 1997) in a representative sample of community couples (N = 1,020). Results from 3 taxometric procedures suggested that marital discord is taxonic, with an estimated base rate of .31. Cut scores for classifying members of this marital discord taxon were identified. Additional analyses with several data sets of community and clinic couples provided evidence that the marital discord taxon classification demonstrated good (a) 6-week test-retest reliability, (b) criterion validity (i.e., differences in taxon prevalence in community vs. clinic couples), and (c) construct validity (i.e., correlations with therapist ratings of relationship quality). These results suggest that discordant couples differ qualitatively and not just quantitatively from nondiscordant couples and that user friendly methods, suitable for a range of research and clinical applications, can be used to identify marital discord. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Knowing me-knowing you: Reported personality and trait discrepancies as predictors of marital idealization between long-wed spouses.

In previous research, marital idealization has emerged as a significant predictor of adaptation to widowhood, the psychological well-being of spouses of persons with dementia, and the physical health of older married adults over time. Despite the adaptive value of marital idealization, conceptual confusion regarding this phenomenon persists. To this end, the present study examines the degree to which marital idealization is predicted by personality traits relative to partner perceptions of their spouse's personality, and discrepancies between self- vs. spousal reports for both husbands and wives. Multilevel models were computed on the basis of responses from 125 couples married an average of 34 years. Marital idealization by husbands was predicted by his personality (i.e., lower neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, and higher conscientiousness). In contrast, marital idealization by wives was predicted by trait discrepancies (i.e., being seen, and seeing one's spouse, more positively than she or he sees him- or herself). Conscientiousness emerged as the trait for which between-sex differences were most pronounced, whereas both conscientiousness and agreeableness were the traits most broadly associated with marital idealization by both spouses (intracouple trait averages and discrepancies between spousal reports). These results are discussed in relation to gender socialization and between-sex differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The dynamic goal theory of marital satisfaction.

Marital satisfaction is gaining increasing concern in modern society. The current review proposes the dynamic goal theory of marital satisfaction to integrate previous findings about marital satisfaction from a life span developmental perspective. The theory argues that people have multiple goals to achieve in their marriage. These marital goals can be classified into three categories: personal growth goals, companionship goals, and instrumental goals. The priority of the three types of marital goals is under dynamic changes across adulthood. Generally speaking, young couples emphasize the personal growth goals, middle-aged couples prioritize the instrumental goals, and old couples focus on the companionship goals. Whether the prioritized marital goals are achieved in marriage determines marital satisfaction. Other factors influencing marital satisfaction can be linked with marital goals in two ways. Some factors, such as life transitions and cultural values, can affect the priority of different marital goals; while other factors, such as communication pattern, problem solving, and attribution, can facilitate the achievement of the prioritized marital goals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conflict and love: Predicting newlywed marital outcomes from two interaction contexts.

Research on marital interaction has focused primarily on couples in conflict contexts to understand better processes associated with concurrent and longitudinal outcomes such as marital stability and quality. Although this work has consistently revealed particular emotions (e.g., contempt) or behavioral sequences (e.g., demand/withdraw) predictive of later marital distress, it largely has neglected to take positive contexts into consideration. The present longitudinal study begins to address this gap in the literature by directly comparing newlywed behaviors from a conflict-resolution interaction with those from a love-paradigm interaction to predict relationship satisfaction and divorce proneness approximately 15 months later. Results showed that actor and partner negative (contempt) and positive (affection) emotions elicited in both positive (i.e., love) and negative (i.e., conflict) interaction contexts emerged as unique predictors of relationship quality and stability for both husbands and wives. Moreover, using a linear growth model, the temporal course of positive emotion during the love context, but not the conflict context, was predictive of later relationship satisfaction. Implications for future marital research and intervention are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional behavior in long-term marriage.

In exploring the emotional climate of long-term marriages, this study used an observational coding system to identify specific emotional behaviors expressed by middle-aged and older spouses during discussions of a marital problem. One hundred and fifty-six couples differing in age and marital satisfaction were studied. Emotional behaviors expressed by couples differed as a function of age, gender, and marital satisfaction. In older couples, the resolution of conflict was less emotionally negative and more affectionate than in middle-aged marriages. Differences between husbands and wives and between happy and unhappy marriages were also found. Wives were more affectively negative than husbands, whereas husbands were more defensive than wives, and unhappy marriages involved greater exchange of negative affect than happy marriages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physiological down-regulation and positive emotion in marital interaction.

Previous studies have demonstrated that 1 function of positive emotion is the undoing of physiological arousal produced by negative emotions. These studies have used single-subject paradigms, in which emotions were induced by films in college-age individuals. In the present study, we examined the relationship between physiological down-regulation and positive emotion in a sample of 149 middle-aged and older married couples engaged in a 15-min discussion of an area of marital conflict. During the conversation, autonomic and somatic physiological activity was measured, and emotional behaviors were recorded and subsequently coded. We found that during 20-s periods of down-regulation (where physiology transitioned from high arousal to low arousal), couples showed an increase in positive emotional behavior compared with periods without down-regulation. The finding was quite robust, suggesting that the undoing effect of positive emotion generalizes across age, sex, and marital satisfaction. The advantages of using positive emotion as an emotion regulation strategy are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aggressive marital conflict, maternal harsh punishment, and child aggressive-disruptive behavior: Evidence for direct and mediated relations.

Direct associations between aggressive marital conflict and child aggressive-disruptive behavior at home and school were explored in this cross-sectional study of 360 kindergarten children. In addition, mediated pathways linking aggressive marital conflict to maternal harsh punishment to child aggressive-disruptive behavior were examined. Moderation analyses explored how the overall frequency of marital disagreement might buffer or exacerbate the impact of aggressive marital conflict on maternal harsh punishment and child aggressive-disruptive behavior. Hierarchical regressions revealed direct pathways linking aggressive marital conflict to child aggressive-disruptive behavior at home and school and a partially mediated pathway linking aggressive marital conflict to child aggressive-disruptive behavior at home. Further analyses revealed that rates of marital disagreement moderated the association between aggressive marital conflict and child aggressive-disruptive behavior at home, with an attenuated association at high rates of marital disagreement as compared with low rates of marital disagreement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital interactions of male versus female alcoholics

This study assessed the interactions of 131 alcoholic and nonalcoholic couples as they engaged in discussions of personally relevant problems. For 50 couples, the husband was alcoholic; for 15 couples, the wife was alcoholic; for 16 couples, both spouses were alcoholics; and for 50 couples, neither spouse was alcoholic. Observations were conducted during sessions when alcohol was consumed and in nondrinking sessions. Female alcoholic couples (with nonalcoholic spouses) demonstrated high negativity in the "no-drink" session, which was normalized in the drink session, suggesting an adaptive function to alcohol use. Concordant couples (both members were alcoholic) also demonstrated high negativity in the no-drink session, but exhibited increased negativity in the drink session, suggesting that concordance has a maladaptive impact on marital interaction. All alcoholic groups demonstrated greater negativity and lower positivity and congeniality in their marital interactions compared to nonalcoholic couples. Couples with male alcoholics were the least divergent from normal control couples. Unique female patterns in alcoholism are discussed in terms of adaptive and reinforcing patterns and spousal influences.