Dyadic Processes in Early Marriage: Attributions, Behavior, and Marital Quality

Overview

Journal Fam Relat

Date 2016 Apr 19

PMID 27087728

Citations 8

Authors

Jared A Durtschi

Frank D Fincham

Ming Cui

Frederick O Lorenz

Rand D Conger

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Marital processes in early marriage are important for understanding couples' future marital quality. Spouses' attributions about a partner's behavior have been linked to marital quality, yet the mechanisms underlying this association remain largely unknown. Using couple data from the Family Transitions Project (N = 280 couples) across the first four years of marriage, results from actor-partner interdependence modeling demonstrated that early marriage responsibility attributions were associated with marital quality four years later, after controlling for initial marital quality. Further, couple's warm and hostile behavior two years into the marriage mediated the attribution-marital quality association. The results suggest that interventions designed to facilitate change in romantic relationships may benefit from addressing attributions for the partner's behavior, in addition to changing behaviors, as part of a dyadic process unfolding across time.

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