Communication during marital conflict: When couples alter their appraisal, they change their behavior.

In a sample of 77 recently married couples, within-person variance in cognitive appraisal was expected to predict corresponding within-person variance in communication behavior during conflict. Three types of appraisal were considered: expectancies of partner understanding, expectancies of partner negative communication, and attributions. Couples were observed in 4 different conflict conversations, completed during 2 assessment sessions, and appraisals were assessed prior to each conversation. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze within-person effects. Changes from one conversation to the next in all 3 types of appraisal predicted corresponding within-person change in communication, and many effects were larger for wives than for husbands. Results were strongest for expectancies of partner understanding. Expectancies predicted change in one's own behavior after controlling for the accuracy of the expectancy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceived threat and perceived neglect: Couples' underlying concerns during conflict.

The Couples Underlying Concern Inventory assesses 2 fundamental types of distress that couples experience during interpersonal conflict. Perceived threat involves a perception that one's partner is blaming and controlling the self. Perceived neglect involves a perception that one's partner is failing to make desired contributions or investments. Scales measuring these 2 underlying concerns were developed in Study 1, where a sample of 1,224 married people rated a pool of 57 words describing oneself and perceptions of a partner during a specific episode of conflict. Factor analysis identified 2 dimensions, and 2 brief 8-item scales were created. In Study 2, a sample of 2,315 married people completed the resulting 16-item inventory along with 10 self-report scales measuring types of emotion, cognition, and behavior during conflict. A 2-dimensional factor structure was confirmed, and measurement invariance was demonstrated across 4 racial/ethnic groups. Both perceived threat and perceived neglect correlated with relationship satisfaction and conflict communication. More importantly, each concern was associated with a different, and theoretically expected, set of variables regarding self emotion, emotion perceived in a partner, and cognition during conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The pre-engagement cohabitation effect: A replication and extension of previous findings.

Using a random telephone survey of men and women married within the past 10 years (N = 1,050), the current study replicated previous findings regarding the timing of engagement and the premarital cohabitation effect (see Kline et al., 2004). Those who cohabited before engagement (43.1%) reported lower marital satisfaction, dedication, and confidence as well as more negative communication and greater potential for divorce than those who cohabited only after engagement (16.4%) or not at all until marriage (40.5%). These differences were generally small, but could not be accounted for by length of marriage or by variables often associated with selection into cohabitation (i.e., age, income, education, and religiousness). Similar results were found in a subsample of individuals who cohabited only with the current spouse. There were no significant differences between those who cohabited after engagement and not at all before marriage, supporting a pre-engagement, but not a premarital cohabitation effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measuring offence-specific forgiveness in marriage: The Marital Offence-Specific Forgiveness Scale (MOFS).

Three studies involving 328 married couples were conducted to validate the Marital Offence-Specific Forgiveness Scale, a new measure assessing offence-specific forgiveness for marital transgressions. The studies examined the dimensionality; internal consistency; and discriminant, concurrent, and predictive validity of the new measure. The final scale comprised 2 distinct correlated dimensions, 1 positive (Benevolence) and 1 negative (Resentment–Avoidance), both of which had adequate internal consistency. The 2 dimensions discriminated marital forgiveness from affective empathy, rumination, attributions, and marital quality. Convergent validity of the new scale was indicated by significant relationships between its underlying dimensions and a host of predicted sociocognitive, relationship, trait, and well-being correlates of forgiveness. Providing evidence for predictive validity, forgiveness dimensions accounted for variability in relationship variables over a 6-month period. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The observation of specific affect in marital interactions: Psychometric properties of a coding system and a rating system.

The Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF; J. M. Gottman & L. J. Krokoff, 1989) has led to conclusions about which types of dyadic affect predict positive and negative outcomes in marriage, yet the lack of information about collinearity among the codes limits interpretation of SPAFF results. Psychometric properties of SPAFF were examined by assessing the interactions of 172 newlywed couples with SPAFF and with an affect rating system developed for this study. For husbands and wives, factor analysis indicated 4 distinct factors of affect, representing anger/contempt, sadness, anxiety, and humor/affection. Anger/contempt and humor/affection were associated with marital satisfaction, relationship beliefs, and appraisals of the interactions. Correlations were in the expected directions. The strengths, limitations, and implications of the data are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety disorders and intimate relationships: A study of daily processes in couples.

Although adults with anxiety disorders often report interpersonal distress, the degree to which anxiety is linked to the quality of close relationships remains unclear. The authors examined the relational impact of anxiety by sampling the daily mood and relationship quality of 33 couples in which the wife was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Use of a daily process design improved on prior methodologies by capturing relational processes closer to their actual occurrence and in the setting of the diagnosed partner’s anxiety. Analyses revealed significant associations between wives’ daily anxiety and both partners’ perceptions of relationship quality. Associations were moderated by anxiety-specific support. Results also indicated significant concordance between wives’ daily anxiety and husbands’ distress. Concordance was stronger for husbands who reported frequent accommodation of wives’ anxiety symptoms. Findings are discussed in the context of existing evidence on the social costs of anxiety disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conflict and collaboration in middle-aged and older couples: I. Age differences in agency and communion during marital interaction.

Prior theory and research regarding age differences in marital interaction suggest that older couples display and experience more positivity and less negativity than middle-aged couples. However, studies of overt behavior in older couples are relatively rare and have emphasized disagreement, neglecting other important contexts for older couples such as collaboration during everyday problem solving. Further, the affiliation or communion dimension of social interaction (i.e., warmth vs. hostility) is commonly assessed but not the control or agency dimension (e.g., dominance vs. submissiveness). The present study examined affect, cognitive appraisals, and overt behavior during disagreement (i.e., discussing a current conflict) and collaboration (i.e., planning errands) in 300 middle-aged and older married couples. Older couples reported less negative affect during disagreement and rated spouses as warmer than did middle-aged couples. However, these effects were eliminated when older couples’ greater marital satisfaction was controlled. For observed behavior, older couples displayed little evidence of greater positivity and reduced negativity—especially women. During collaboration, older couples displayed a unique blend of warmth and control, suggesting a greater focus on emotional and social concerns during problem solving. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Timing Is Everything: Pre-Engagement Cohabitation and Increased Risk for Poor Marital Outcomes.

Data from a longitudinal study were used to examine differences among couples that cohabited before engagement, after engagement, or not until marriage. Survey data and objectively coded couple interaction data were collected for 136 couples (272 individuals) after engagement (but before marriage) and 10 months into marriage. At both time points, the before-engagement cohabiters (59 couples) had more negative interactions, lower interpersonal commitment, lower relationship quality, and lower relationship confidence than those who did not cohabit until after engagement (28 couples) or marriage (49 couples), even after controlling for selection factors and duration of cohabitation. Our findings suggest that those who cohabit before engagement are at greater risk for poor marital outcomes than those who cohabit only after engagement or at marriage, which may have important implications for future research on cohabitation, clinical work, and social policy decisions. (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)     

Couples coping with congestive heart failure: Role and gender differences in psychological distress.

Psychological distress and marital quality were assessed with male (n=128) and female (n=49) congestive-heart-failure (CHF) patients and their spouses. Hopkins Symptom Check List-25 scores were in the distressed range for 57% of patients and 40% of spouses. This role difference was greater for men than for women, and a gender difference (more distress in women than men) was greater for spouses than for patients. The patient's distress, but not the spouse's, reflected the severity of the patient's illness, and distress for both partners correlated negatively with ratings of marital quality. Female-patient couples reported better relationship quality than male-patient couples, however, and a mediation analysis indicated that the gender difference in spouse distress could be explained by marital quality. Results highlight the contextual nature of CHF distress and suggest that role differences in distress vary by gender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Longitudinal Effects of Work-Family Conflict and Positive Spillover on Depressive Symptoms Among Dual-Earner Couples.

This study assessed longitudinal and cross-sectional relationships between work-family conflict, positive spillover, and depression in a national sample of 234 dual-earner couples. The authors also assessed crossover effects (i.e., the transmission of emotions, affect, or stress from 1 member of a dyad to another) of work-family conflict and positive spillover on spouses' depression. Two general findings of the study were that (a) positive spillover has a stronger impact on depression than does work-family conflict, and (b) the effects of spouses' positive spillover were more strongly related to decreased depression than were the effects of one's own positive spillover. Significant longitudinal effects were related to the crossover of positive spillover on decreased spouse depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing conflict communication in couples: Comparing the validity of self-report, partner-report, and observer ratings.

This study of married couples investigated the short-term predictive validity of the partner-report and self-report scales of the Conflict Communication Inventory and compared the validity of these scales with the validity of observer ratings. A sample of 83 married couples completed two problem-solving conversations. Self-report, partner-report, and observer ratings from Conversation 1 were used to predict behavior in Conversation 2, as rated by a separate panel of observers. The short-term predictive validity of partner-report ratings was extremely high and indistinguishable from the validity of observer ratings. Self-report ratings also demonstrated good validity, albeit slightly lower than other methods. Both partner-report and self-report scores explained a substantial amount of variance in concurrent observer ratings of communication after controlling for relationship satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Gambling Craving Scale: Psychometric validation and behavioral outcomes.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 23(4) of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors (see record 2009-24023-002). Some data in Table 4 was inadvertently omitted. The complete Table 4 is presented in the erratum.] Although craving is an important feature of problem gambling, there is a paucity of research investigating craving to gamble. A major stumbling block for craving research in gambling has been the lack of a methodologically sound, multidimensional measure of gambling-related craving. This article reports the development of the Gambling Craving Scale (GACS). In Study 1 (N = 220), a factor analysis revealed the emergence of a 9-item scale with 3 factors: Anticipation, Desire, and Relief. An important finding was that the GACS predicted problem gambling severity, depression, and positive and negative affect. In Study 2 (N = 145), the factor structure of the GACS was confirmed using a community sample of gamblers. In Study 3 (N = 46), GACS scores significantly predicted persistence at play on a virtual slot machine in the face of continued loss. Specifically, the more participants craved to gamble, the longer they engaged in play. The implications of craving for the development and maintenance of problem gambling severity are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The premarital communication roots of marital distress and divorce: The first five years of marriage.

Using data from 210 couples who provided data across the first 5 years of marriage, we examined how premarital communication quality was related to divorce and later distress. The results showed that premarital observed negative and positive communication nearly reached significance as predictors of divorce, while self-reported negative communication was significantly associated with divorce. In terms of marital adjustment, we found that both premarital observed and self-reported negative premarital communication (but not observed positive communication) were associated with lower adjustment during the first 5 years of marriage. The most important questions addressed in this study pertain to how positive and negative dimensions of communication change over time and how these changes are related to being distressed or nondistressed after 5 years of marriage. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to examine the changes in communication over time that are so central to theories of the development of marital distress and for research-based interventions. We found that all couples showed decreases in negative communication over time, but the nondistressed group declined significantly more than the distressed group in negative communication, suggesting they are handling negative emotions better. Implications for future research on the development of relationship distress and for enhancing research-based couples' intervention programs are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Workplace harassment from the victim's perspective: A theoretical model and meta-analysis.

Although workplace harassment affects the lives of many employees, until recently it has been relatively ignored in the organizational psychology literature. First, the authors introduced an attribution- and reciprocity-based model that explains the link between harassment and its potential causes and consequences. The authors then conducted a meta-analysis to examine the potential antecedents and consequences of workplace harassment. As shown by the meta-analysis, both environmental and individual difference factors potentially contributed to harassment and harassment was negatively related to the well-being of both individual employees and their employing organizations. Furthermore, harassment contributed to the variance in many outcomes, even after controlling for 2 of the most commonly studied occupational stressors, role ambiguity and role conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The measurement of executive function at age 3 years: Psychometric properties and criterion validity of a new battery of tasks.

In this study, the authors examined the psychometric properties and criterion validity of a newly developed battery of tasks that were designed to assess executive function (EF) abilities in early childhood. The battery was included in the 36-month assessment of the Family Life Project (FLP), a prospective longitudinal study of 1,292 children oversampled from low-income and African American families. Ninety-one percent of children were able to complete 1 or more of the tasks. Psychometric analyses were used to test the dimensionality of each task, evaluate the item and task properties, test the dimensionality of the task battery, and evaluate the criterion validity of the battery with multi-informant measures of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptomatology and child performance on two subtests of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence. Results indicated that the tasks were successful in measuring interindividual differences in child EF ability, that task scores were most informative about ability level for children in the low to moderate range of ability, that children's performance across the entire battery was adequately summarized by a single factor, and that individual differences on the EF battery were related to ADHD symptomatology and intelligence in expected ways. Results are discussed with respect to the importance of developing psychometrically sound, scalable instruments that facilitate the measurement of interindividual differences in intraindividual change of EF across the early childhood period. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Patient-Appraised Couple Emotion Management and Disease Management Among Chinese American Patients With Type 2 Diabetes.

Family context exerts a strong influence on disease management among patients with chronic disease, but it is not clear which aspects of family life are most influential. This study examined the linkages between patient-appraised couple emotion management (conflict resolution, expressiveness, and respect) and disease management (biological, morale/depression, quality of life, and behavioral) among a relatively understudied group, Chinese American patients with type 2 diabetes. Significant main effects were found between patient-appraised couple emotion management, especially conflict resolution, and the morale component of disease management, but not the biological or behavioral components; both diabetes-specific and general relationship qualities (marital satisfaction) were independently linked to disease management. Acculturation did not qualify the findings. Similarities among ethnic groups in family and disease management relationships may be more common than differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prorelationship maintenance behaviors: The joint roles of attachment and commitment.

The present research uses a behavioral observation methodology to examine emotional and behavioral reactions to threatening interpersonal situations in married couples. The research shows that although anxious attachment can hinder people’s tendencies to react constructively to threatening events, greater relationship commitment may serve as a buffer against the negative effects associated with attachment insecurities, diminishing feelings of rejection, enhancing feelings of acceptance, and promoting more constructive accommodation behaviors. The research also reveals that wives’ degree of relationship commitment has stronger effects on emotional outcomes for both partners than does husbands’ degree of commitment. Moreover, husbands’ and wives’ emotional reactions affect their own accommodative behaviors as well as their spouses’ behaviors. These dyadic findings are discussed in terms of attachment theory and interdependence theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol-Focused Spouse Involvement and Behavioral Couples Therapy: Evaluation of Enhancements to Drinking Reduction Treatment for Male Problem Drinkers.

This study evaluated the effects of alcohol-focused spouse involvement and behavioral couples therapy (BCT) in group drinking reduction treatment for male problem drinkers. Sixty-four male clients and their female partners were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: treatment for problem drinkers only (PDO), couples alcohol-focused treatment, or the latter combined with BCT. Clients whose partners were included in treatment evidenced fewer heavy drinking days and more abstinent/light drinking days in the year following treatment, relative to PDO clients. The combination of alcohol-focused spouse involvement and BCT yielded no better outcomes than alcohol-focused spouse involvement alone. Drinking consequences, spouse behavioral support for drinking reduction, and relationship satisfaction showed no effects of treatment condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)