B R Karney
Biographic Data
| ID | 50141 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B R Karney |
| GIVEN NAMES | B R |
| FAMILY NAME | Karney |
| SIGNATURE | KARNEY B R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9063-6162 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 65 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 793 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 65 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Division of Housework, Sexual Intimacy, and Relationship Quality in Different‐Sex and Same‐Sex Couples
Objective This study compares associations between division of housework and relationship outcomes across members of different‐sex and same‐sex couples. Background Different‐sex couples tend to report lower relationship quality when housework is divided in unequal and gendered ways. Because most research has focused on different‐sex couples, it remains unclear whether these associations stem from general fairness principles or a disruption of gen…
Can Generative AI Chatbots Emulate Human Connection? A Relationship Science Perspective
The development of generative artificial intelligence capable of sustaining complex conversations has created a burgeoning market for companion chatbots promising social and emotional connection. The appeal of these products raises questions about whether chatbots can fulfill the functions of close relationships. Proponents argue that relationships with chatbots can be as meaningful as relationships between humans, whereas critics argue they are …
Lasting Declines in Couples’ Social Network Interactions in the First Years of Covid
Since the onset of COVID-19, a rise in loneliness has raised concerns about the social impact of lockdowns and distancing mandates. Yet, to date, the effects of the pandemic on social networks have been studied only indirectly. To evaluate how the pandemic affected social networks, the current analyses analyzed five waves of detailed social network interviews conducted before and during the first 18 months of the pandemic in a sample especially v…
Are changes in marital satisfaction sustained and steady, or sporadic and dramatic
Although prominent theories of intimate relationships, and couples themselves, often conceive of relationships as fluctuating widely in their degree of closeness, longitudinal studies generally describe partners' satisfaction as stable and continuous or as steadily declining over time. The increasing use of group-based trajectory models (GBTMs) to identify distinct classes of change has reinforced this characterization, but these models fail to a…
Typologies of duocentric networks among low-income newlywed couples
The social networks surrounding intimate couples provide them with bonding and bridging social capital and have been theorized to be associated with their well-being and relationship quality. These networks are multidimensional, featuring compositional (e.g., the proportion of family members vs. friends) and structural characteristics (e.g., density, degree of overlap between spouses’ networks). Most previous studies of couple networks are based …
A Bayesian Latent Variable Selection Model for Nonignorable Missingness
Missing data are exceedingly common across a variety of disciplines, such as educational, social, and behavioral science areas. Missing not at random (MNAR) mechanism where missingness is related to unobserved data is widespread in real data and has detrimental consequence. However, the existing MNAR-based methods have potential problems such as leaving the data incomplete and failing to accommodate incomplete covariates with interactions, non-li…
State minimum wage increases delay marriage and reduce divorce among low‐wage households
Objective: To estimate the effects of state-level changes in the minimum wage on marriage and divorce among low-wage earners. Background: Proponents of raising the minimum wage highlight the potential benefits of increased earnings for low-income families, yet to date research on the effects of raising the minimum wage has focused almost exclusively on economic outcomes. No research has yet documented whether these changes actually affect marriag…
Friendship Network Satisfaction: A multifaceted construct scored as a unidimensional scale
Although satisfying friendships are crucial for well-being throughout adulthood, measures of friendship satisfaction have been limited by: (1) item content relevant to children only, (2) a focus on single relationships rather than the friendship network, and (3) disagreement about the number of dimensions necessary to capture the construct. To overcome these limitations, we assembled an item pool from a number of existing measures, created additi…
Socioeconomic Status and Intimate Relationships
The ways that couples form and manage their intimate relationships at higher and lower levels of socioeconomic status (SES) have been diverging steadily over the past several decades. At higher SES levels, couples postpone marriage and childbirth to invest in education and careers, but they eventually marry at high rates and have relatively low risk for divorce. At lower SES levels, couples are more likely to cohabit and give birth prior to marri…
Research on Marital Satisfaction and Stability in the 2010s: Challenging Conventional Wisdom
Although getting married is no longer a requirement for social acceptance, most people do marry in their lifetimes, and couples across the socioeconomic spectrum wish their marriages to be satisfying and long lasting. This review evaluates the past decade of research on the determinants of satisfaction and stability in marriage, concluding that the scholarship of the past 10 years has undermined three assumptions that were formerly accepted as co…
Communication that is maladaptive for middle-class couples is adaptive for socioeconomically disadvantaged couples
Demands for change in a relationship, particularly when met by behavioral withdrawal, foreshadow declines in relationship satisfaction. Yet demands can give partners opportunities to voice concerns, and withdrawal can serve to de-escalate conflict, stabilizing satisfaction instead (e.g., Overall, Fletcher, Simpson, & Sibley, 2009). We aim to reconcile these competing possibilities by arguing that withdrawal in response to requests for change will…
Personality change among newlyweds: Patterns, predictors, and associations with marital satisfaction over time
The early years of marriage are a time of significant personal and relational changes as partners adjust to their new roles, but the specific ways that spouses' personalities may change in early marriage and how these changes are associated with spouses' marital satisfaction trajectories have been overlooked. Using 3 waves of data collected over the first 18 months of marriage (N = 338 spouses, or 169 heterosexual newlywed marriages), we examined…
Acknowledging the elephant in the room: How stressful environmental contexts shape relationship dynamics
Patterns of Vulnerabilities and Resources in U.S. Military Families
The appropriate format for services supporting military families depends on how vulnerabilities and resources are distributed across and within those families. If different types of vulnerabilities cluster together, then programs supporting families should combine multiple services rather than targeting specific concerns. Yet scant data exist about how vulnerabilities and resources covary within military families. The current study addressed this…
Household Income and Trajectories of Marital Satisfaction in Early Marriage
Are the marriages of lower income couples less satisfying than the marriages of more affluent couples? To address this question, we compared trajectories of marital satisfaction among couples with a wide range of household incomes. The marital satisfaction of 862 Black, White, and Latino newlywed spouses (N = 431 couples) was assessed five times, each 9 months apart, during the first 4 years of marriage. Lower income couples did not have less sat…
Associations Between Prior Deployments and Marital Satisfaction Among Army Couples
Although the experience of deployments has been described as devastating to married life, evidence linking deployments directly to poorer marital functioning has been sparse. The analyses described in this article compare associations between prior deployments and current marital satisfaction across four different ways of measuring prior deployment within a large and representative sample of married Army service members and their spouses. Results…
Are problems that contribute to divorce present at the start of marriage, or do they emerge over time
Divorced individuals offer explanations for why their relationship ended, yet little is known about the development of these problems during the relationship. Problems that lead to divorce may exist at the beginning of the marriage (enduring dynamics model) or may develop over time (emergent distress model). We asked 40 divorced individuals about the reasons for their divorce and compared the development of problems that did and did not contribut…
Employment Gaps Between Military Spouses and Matched Civilians
Drawing upon data from the Deployment Life Study, this article examines whether female military spouses (SPs) are disadvantaged relative to matched civilian peers in terms of hours worked and earnings, paying particular attention to gaps among the highest educated women. Female SPs do earn less than comparable civilian peers in terms of raw dollars and percentage earnings. Moreover, military wives who are part of the labor force work as many hour…
Does Couples' Communication Predict Marital Satisfaction, or Does Marital Satisfaction Predict Communication
The quality of communication between spouses is widely assumed to affect their subsequent judgments of relationship satisfaction, yet this assumption is rarely tested against the alternative prediction that communication is merely a consequence of spouses' prior levels of satisfaction. To evaluate these perspectives, newlywed couples' positivity, negativity, and effectiveness were observed four times at 9-month intervals, and these behaviors were…
Personality and Marriage
The Analysis of Duocentric Social Networks: A Primer
Marriages and other intimate partnerships are facilitated or constrained by the social networks within which they are embedded. To date, methods used to assess the social networks of couples have been limited to global ratings of social network characteristics or network data collected from each partner separately. In the current article, the authors offer new tools for expanding on the existing literature by describing methods of collecting and …
Men still value physical attractiveness in a long-term mate more than women: Rejoinder to Eastwick, Neff, Finkel, Luchies, and Hunt (2014)
Sexual selection theory and parental investment theory suggest that partner physical attractiveness should more strongly affect men's relationship outcomes than women's relationship outcomes. Nevertheless, the contextual nature of this prediction makes serious methodological demands on studies designed to evaluate it. Given these theories suggest that men value observable aspects of partner attractiveness more than women do only in the context of…
Sex differences in the implications of partner physical attractiveness for the trajectory of marital satisfaction
Do men value physical attractiveness in a mate more than women? Scientists in numerous disciplines believe that they do, but recent research using speed-dating paradigms suggests that males and females are equally influenced by physical attractiveness when choosing potential mates. Nevertheless, the premise of the current work is that sex differences in the importance of physical attractiveness are most likely to emerge in research on long-term r…
A Social Network Comparison of Low-Income Black and White Newlywed Couples
Relative to White families, Black families have been described as relying on extended social networks to compensate for other social and economic disadvantages. The presence or absence of supportive social networks should be especially relevant to young couples entering marriage, but to date there has been little effort to describe the social networks of comparable Black and White newlyweds. The current study addressed this gap by drawing on inte…
Financial strain and stressful events predict newlyweds' negative communication independent of relationship satisfaction.
Social-learning perspectives explicitly recognize the role of partners' personal histories and contexts as possible causes of couple communication behavior, but these assumptions are rarely tested directly, and operationalizations of context in behavioral research on couples rarely extend beyond the interacting dyad. To broaden our understanding of why couples differ in communication, the current study examined whether observed behaviors in marit…
Neuroticism, marital interaction, and the trajectory of marital satisfaction
Gender Differences in Social Support: A Question of Skill or Responsiveness
Spouses often report that wives provide better social support than husbands. Yet studies observing spouses' supportive interactions challenge this perception, finding no differences between husbands' and wives' supportive behaviors. This article offers reconciliation by suggesting that husbands and wives may differ, not in their skill at providing support, but in their responsiveness to their partners' changing needs over time. Observational and …
Research on Marital Satisfaction and Stability in the 2010s: Challenging Conventional Wisdom
Although getting married is no longer a requirement for social acceptance, most people do marry in their lifetimes, and couples across the socioeconomic spectrum wish their marriages to be satisfying and long lasting. This review evaluates the past decade of research on the determinants of satisfaction and stability in marriage, concluding that the scholarship of the past 10 years has undermined three assumptions that were formerly accepted as co…
Stress and reactivity to daily relationship experiences: How stress hinders adaptive processes in marriage
Maintaining a relationship requires that intimates successfully navigate the ups and downs of their daily experiences with their partners. Intimates whose daily global satisfaction is heavily dependent on these experiences exhibit worse relationship outcomes than do intimates whose satisfaction is less sensitive to fluctuating daily experiences. The current studies examined how intimates' reactivity to daily experiences within the relationship is…
Attachment change processes in the early years of marriage
The authors examined 4 models of attachment change: a contextual model, a social-cognitive model, an individual-difference model, and a diathesis-stress model. Models were examined in a sample of newlyweds over the first 2 years of marriage, using growth curve analyses. Reciprocal processes, whereby attachment representations and interpersonal life circumstances affect one another over time, also were studied. On average, newlyweds became more se…
Stress Crossover in Newlywed Marriage: A Longitudinal and Dyadic Perspective
Studies of stress and marital quality often assess stress as an intrapersonal phenomenon, examining how spouses' stress may influence their own relationship well-being. Yet spouses' stress also may influence partners' relationship evaluations, a phenomenon referred to as stress crossover. This study examined stress crossover, and conditions that may facilitate crossover, in a sample of 169 newlywed couples over 3.5 years. A significant crossover …
To Know You Is to Love You: The Implications of Global Adoration and Specific Accuracy for Marital Relationships
Despite the strong positive feelings that characterize newlyweds, many marriages end in disappointment. To understand this shift, the authors argue that although newlyweds' global relationship evaluations may be uniformly positive, not all spouses base their global adoration on an accurate perception of their partner's specific qualities. Two longitudinal studies confirmed that whereas most newlyweds enhanced their partners at the level of their …
The role of negative affectivity in the association between attributions and marital satisfaction
Structural equation modeling with latent variables was used to test whether negative affectivity, or the cross-situational tendency to experience and express negative thoughts and feelings, correlates with spouses' attributions for relationship events and accounts for the association between attributions and satisfaction. Eighty married couples completed measures of marital satisfaction, attributions, and negative affectivity. Spouses high in neg…
Understanding and altering the longitudinal course of marriage
Weak and counterintuitive findings linking couples' interactional processes to marital outcomes have prompted new lines of research on how marriages change. Recent findings reviewed here highlight the value of (a) expanding conceptions of marital interaction by considering how social support and positive affect moderate the effects of problem-solving skills on changes in marital quality; (b) examining partners' individual strengths and vulnerabil…
Positive Expectations in the Early Years of Marriage: Should Couples Expect the Best or Brace for the Worst
The current study examined whether the effects of positive expectations on changes in marital satisfaction over the first 4 years of marriage were moderated by the nature of spouses' interaction behaviors and relationship attributions. Consistent with predictions, when spouses' skills were most positive, positive expectations predicted more stable satisfaction over time whereas less positive expectations predicted steeper declines. Alternatively,…
Attributions in marriage: State or trait? A growth curve analysis
Assessing Longitudinal Change in Marriage: An Introduction to the Analysis of Growth Curves
Fundamental topics in understanding marriage involve issues of and change. For example, determining the causes of marital distress requires that marital quality be examined repeatedly in marriages that may be deteriorating or remaining satisfied over time. Investigating the effects of the transition to parenthood on marriage calls for describing the course of marriages across that transition. Evaluating interventions designed to alleviate or prev…
Does Couples' Communication Predict Marital Satisfaction, or Does Marital Satisfaction Predict Communication
The quality of communication between spouses is widely assumed to affect their subsequent judgments of relationship satisfaction, yet this assumption is rarely tested against the alternative prediction that communication is merely a consequence of spouses' prior levels of satisfaction. To evaluate these perspectives, newlywed couples' positivity, negativity, and effectiveness were observed four times at 9-month intervals, and these behaviors were…
Benevolent cognitions as a strategy of relationship maintenance: "Don't sweat the small stuff"….But it is not all small stuff
To maintain intimate relationships in the face of negative experiences, many recommend cognitive strategies that minimize the implications of those experiences for global evaluations of the relationship. But are such strategies always adaptive? Suggesting otherwise, 2 longitudinal studies spanning the 1st 4 years of 251 new marriages revealed that the effects of benevolent cognitions on relationship development depended on the initial levels of n…
Sex differences in the implications of partner physical attractiveness for the trajectory of marital satisfaction
Do men value physical attractiveness in a mate more than women? Scientists in numerous disciplines believe that they do, but recent research using speed-dating paradigms suggests that males and females are equally influenced by physical attractiveness when choosing potential mates. Nevertheless, the premise of the current work is that sex differences in the importance of physical attractiveness are most likely to emerge in research on long-term r…
What's (Not) Wrong With Low-Income Marriages
In the United States, low marriage rates and high divorce rates among the poor have led policymakers to target this group for skills- and values-based interventions. The current research evaluated the assumptions underlying these interventions; specifically, the authors examined whether low-income respondents held less traditional values toward marriage, had unrealistic standards for marriage, and had more problems managing relational problems th…
But we've been getting better lately: Comparing prospective and retrospective views of relationship development
What kinds of stories do people wish to tell about the development of their close relationships? To address this question, 2 studies of newlyweds compared retrospective reports of marital satisfaction over 4 years with prospective data on marital satisfaction over the same period. In both studies, growth curve analyses revealed that spouses tended to recall satisfaction that had declined in the distant past but made up for those declines with rec…
Obstacles to Ethnic Diversity in Marital Research: On the Failure of Good Intentions
Despite a consensus that marital research would benefit from more ethnically diverse samples, most marital research continues to address samples composed primarily of middle-class Whites. The goal of the current study was to identify reasons that attempts to recruit ethnically diverse samples may fall short. Analyses of data from couples responding to solicitations to participate in a longitudinal study of newly-weds revealed that, relative to Wh…
An Empirical Investigation of Sampling Strategies in Marital Research
Benjamin R. Karney, Joanne Davila, Catherine L. Cohan, Kieran T. Sullivan, Matthew D. Johnson, Thomas N. Bradbury, An Empirical Investigation of Sampling Strategies in Marital Research, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Nov., 1995), pp. 909-920
Relationship Risks in Context: A Cumulative Risk Approach to Understanding Relationship Satisfaction
Risks associated with less satisfying intimate relationships often co-occur within individuals, raising questions about approaches that consider only their independent impact. Utilizing thecumulative risk model, which acknowledges the natural covariation of risk factors, this study examined individuals in intimate relationships using the Florida Family Formation Survey (n= 2,876) and a replication sample (n= 1,048). Analyses confirmed that not on…
Household Income and Trajectories of Marital Satisfaction in Early Marriage
Are the marriages of lower income couples less satisfying than the marriages of more affluent couples? To address this question, we compared trajectories of marital satisfaction among couples with a wide range of household incomes. The marital satisfaction of 862 Black, White, and Latino newlywed spouses (N = 431 couples) was assessed five times, each 9 months apart, during the first 4 years of marriage. Lower income couples did not have less sat…
Demands and Withdrawal in Newlyweds: Elaborating on the Social Structure Hypothesis
Why is it that, when interacting about a marital problem, wives are more likely to make demands, whereas husbands are more likely to withdraw? The social structure hypothesis suggests that wives are more likely to demand because marital relationships tend to favor husbands, who are accordingly more committed to maintaining the status quo. To elaborate on this explanation, the current study used observational data to examine correlates of demand a…
Stability and change in the first 10 years of marriage: Does commitment confer benefits beyond the effects of satisfaction
Although commitment is theoretically distinct from relationship satisfaction, empirical associations between the concepts are high. After drawing from classic definitions of commitment to distinguish between commitment as the desire for a relationship to persist versus the behavioral inclination to maintain the relationship, we predicted that the former component would function much like satisfaction, whereas the latter component would operate in…
A Social Network Comparison of Low-Income Black and White Newlywed Couples
Relative to White families, Black families have been described as relying on extended social networks to compensate for other social and economic disadvantages. The presence or absence of supportive social networks should be especially relevant to young couples entering marriage, but to date there has been little effort to describe the social networks of comparable Black and White newlyweds. The current study addressed this gap by drawing on inte…
Communication that is maladaptive for middle-class couples is adaptive for socioeconomically disadvantaged couples
Demands for change in a relationship, particularly when met by behavioral withdrawal, foreshadow declines in relationship satisfaction. Yet demands can give partners opportunities to voice concerns, and withdrawal can serve to de-escalate conflict, stabilizing satisfaction instead (e.g., Overall, Fletcher, Simpson, & Sibley, 2009). We aim to reconcile these competing possibilities by arguing that withdrawal in response to requests for change will…
The role of negative affectivity in the association between attributions and marital satisfaction
Structural equation modeling with latent variables was used to test whether negative affectivity, or the cross-situational tendency to experience and express negative thoughts and feelings, correlates with spouses' attributions for relationship events and accounts for the association between attributions and satisfaction. Eighty married couples completed measures of marital satisfaction, attributions, and negative affectivity. Spouses high in neg…
The longitudinal course of marital quality and stability: A review of theory, methods, and research
The longitudinal course of marital quality and stability: A review of theory, method, and research
Although much has been learned from cross-sectional research on marriage, an understanding of how marriages develop, succeed, and fail is best achieved with longitudinal data. In view of growing interest in longitudinal research on marriage, the authors reviewed and evaluated the literature on how the quality and stability of marriages change over time. First, prevailing theoretical perspectives are examined for their ability to explain change in…
Assessing Longitudinal Change in Marriage: An Introduction to the Analysis of Growth Curves
Fundamental topics in understanding marriage involve issues of and change. For example, determining the causes of marital distress requires that marital quality be examined repeatedly in marriages that may be deteriorating or remaining satisfied over time. Investigating the effects of the transition to parenthood on marriage calls for describing the course of marriages across that transition. Evaluating interventions designed to alleviate or prev…
An Empirical Investigation of Sampling Strategies in Marital Research
Benjamin R. Karney, Joanne Davila, Catherine L. Cohan, Kieran T. Sullivan, Matthew D. Johnson, Thomas N. Bradbury, An Empirical Investigation of Sampling Strategies in Marital Research, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Nov., 1995), pp. 909-920
Neuroticism, marital interaction, and the trajectory of marital satisfaction
Attachment change processes in the early years of marriage
The authors examined 4 models of attachment change: a contextual model, a social-cognitive model, an individual-difference model, and a diathesis-stress model. Models were examined in a sample of newlyweds over the first 2 years of marriage, using growth curve analyses. Reciprocal processes, whereby attachment representations and interpersonal life circumstances affect one another over time, also were studied. On average, newlyweds became more se…
Attributions in marriage: State or trait? A growth curve analysis
Electronic Notes
Judgments of a Relationship Partner: Specific Accuracy but Global Enhancement
How do partners in satisfying close relationships perceive each other? Some argue that relationships benefit from each partner having an accurate view of the other, while others maintain that partners benefit when they perceive each other in the most positive light possible. The current paper proposes that each of these benefits operates at a separate level of abstraction. Specifically, we propose that satisfied partners tend to be accurate in th…
But we've been getting better lately: Comparing prospective and retrospective views of relationship development
What kinds of stories do people wish to tell about the development of their close relationships? To address this question, 2 studies of newlyweds compared retrospective reports of marital satisfaction over 4 years with prospective data on marital satisfaction over the same period. In both studies, growth curve analyses revealed that spouses tended to recall satisfaction that had declined in the distant past but made up for those declines with rec…
Demands and Withdrawal in Newlyweds: Elaborating on the Social Structure Hypothesis
Why is it that, when interacting about a marital problem, wives are more likely to make demands, whereas husbands are more likely to withdraw? The social structure hypothesis suggests that wives are more likely to demand because marital relationships tend to favor husbands, who are accordingly more committed to maintaining the status quo. To elaborate on this explanation, the current study used observational data to examine correlates of demand a…
Depressive Symptoms and Marital Satisfaction: Within-Subject Associations and the Moderating Effects of Gender and Neuroticism.
Given the emphasis on within-subject associations between depression and marital quality in recent theory and practice, this study was undertaken with three goals: to examine within-subject associations between depressive symptoms and marital quality over time, to address gender differences in the magnitude and direction of these associations, and to determine whether neuroticism moderates the strength of these associations. A total of 164 newly …
Gender and Attitudes Toward Nutrition in Prospective Physicians
Gender differences in attitudes towards nutrition are not moderated by medical school socialization. Standardized nutrition education may be required to address disparities in knowledge, attitudes, and efficacy with regard to nutrition and preventive care measures
How Does Context Affect Intimate Relationships? Linking External Stress and Cognitive Processes within Marriage
Stressors external to the marriage frequently affect the way spouses evaluate their marital quality. To date, however,understanding of the interplay between external stress and internalrelationship processes has been limited in two ways. First,research has generally examined only the short-termconsequences of stress. Second, the mechanisms through whichexternal stressors influence relationship outcomes are unclear. Thisstudy addressed both limita…
Revision in memories of relationship development: Do biases persist over time
Partners often recall that their relationship satisfaction has improved over the recent past, even when their satisfaction has actually declined, and such perceptions appear to contribute to optimism about the future. But what happens to memories as the recent past recedes into the distant past? To address this question, data were examined from a U.S. sample of 53 newlywed couples. Every 6 months, spouses reported their memories of relationship c…
Positive Expectations in the Early Years of Marriage: Should Couples Expect the Best or Brace for the Worst
The current study examined whether the effects of positive expectations on changes in marital satisfaction over the first 4 years of marriage were moderated by the nature of spouses' interaction behaviors and relationship attributions. Consistent with predictions, when spouses' skills were most positive, positive expectations predicted more stable satisfaction over time whereas less positive expectations predicted steeper declines. Alternatively,…
Obstacles to Ethnic Diversity in Marital Research: On the Failure of Good Intentions
Despite a consensus that marital research would benefit from more ethnically diverse samples, most marital research continues to address samples composed primarily of middle-class Whites. The goal of the current study was to identify reasons that attempts to recruit ethnically diverse samples may fall short. Analyses of data from couples responding to solicitations to participate in a longitudinal study of newly-weds revealed that, relative to Wh…
Understanding and altering the longitudinal course of marriage
Weak and counterintuitive findings linking couples' interactional processes to marital outcomes have prompted new lines of research on how marriages change. Recent findings reviewed here highlight the value of (a) expanding conceptions of marital interaction by considering how social support and positive affect moderate the effects of problem-solving skills on changes in marital quality; (b) examining partners' individual strengths and vulnerabil…
Marriages in Context: Interactions Between Chronic and Acute Stress Among Newlyweds.
Contextual Influences on Marriage: Implications for Policy and Intervention
Current proposals to promote and strengthen marriage among low-income populations focus on values and behavioral skills as primary targets of intervention. Marital research that examines contextual influences on marriage calls these emphases into question. Ethnographic and survey research reveal no evidence that populations experiencing higher rates of divorce value healthy marriages any less than other populations do. Longitudinal and observatio…
Problem-Solving Skills and Affective Expressions as Predictors of Change in Marital Satisfaction.
Specific skills and affective expressions coded from the problem-solving interactions of 172 newlywed couples were examined in relation to 8-wave, 4-year trajectories of marital satisfaction. Effects varied as a function of whether husbands' versus wives' topics were under discussion and whether husbands' versus wives' satisfaction was predicted, but results indicate that skills, affect, and their statistical interaction account for unique varian…
Gender Differences in Social Support: A Question of Skill or Responsiveness
Spouses often report that wives provide better social support than husbands. Yet studies observing spouses' supportive interactions challenge this perception, finding no differences between husbands' and wives' supportive behaviors. This article offers reconciliation by suggesting that husbands and wives may differ, not in their skill at providing support, but in their responsiveness to their partners' changing needs over time. Observational and …
To Know You Is to Love You: The Implications of Global Adoration and Specific Accuracy for Marital Relationships
Despite the strong positive feelings that characterize newlyweds, many marriages end in disappointment. To understand this shift, the authors argue that although newlyweds' global relationship evaluations may be uniformly positive, not all spouses base their global adoration on an accurate perception of their partner's specific qualities. Two longitudinal studies confirmed that whereas most newlyweds enhanced their partners at the level of their …
Not Shifting but Broadening Marital Research: Comments on Fincham, Stanley, and Beach
Psychology (58 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (51 works) · Social Psychology (46 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (39 works) · Developmental psychology (35 works) · Social Psychology (23 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (14 works) · Clinical Psychology (14 works) · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving (14 works)