اجزای عاطفه منفی و رضایت زناشویی: اهمیت بازیگر و خشم شریک

Marital satisfaction is inversely associated with neuroticism in oneself (actor effects) and one’s spouse (partner effects). However, different facets of neuroticism, particularly angry hostility in comparison to depression or anxiety, may have differential effects on relationship quality. The present study examined actor and partner effects of anxiety, angry hostility, and depression facets of neuroticism on marital satisfaction in 301 couples. All path analyses demonstrated that depression and angry hostility had equivalent, significantly negative actor effects on marital satisfaction, but only angry hostility had a significant negative partner effect. Hence, in examining marital adjustment, the distinction between the various facets of neuroticism may be important. Further, anger may be an important but understudied consideration in research on marital discord.

A substantial body of research suggests a strong link between individual differences in neuroticism or negative affectivity and marital dissatisfaction (see reviews by Karney and Bradbury, 1995 and Malouff et al., 2010). High neuroticism is also a robust risk factor for more transient psychological symptoms of depression, anxiety, and anger (e.g., Martin et al., 2000 and Widiger and Trull, 1992), which, in turn, are also negatively associated with marital satisfaction (e.g., Baron et al., 2007, Renshaw et al., 2005 and Whisman, 2001). Despite these findings, surprisingly few investigations of marital satisfaction have examined individual facets of neuroticism or, in the context of psychopathology research, the relative effects of symptoms of anger, depression, and anxiety considered together. Although theory and empirical research on both aspects of personality and symptoms of emotional distress indicate that anger, depression, and anxiety are clearly related (e.g., Costa and McCrae, 1995 and Smith and Mumma, 2008), they are certainly not isomorphic. Thus, it is possible that when these constructs are considered in isolation from each other, associations between the affective construct measured and marital satisfaction are actually due to the association of marital satisfaction with a correlated but unmeasured affective trait. For example, associations of anxiety with marital dissatisfaction may, in fact, reflect the association of marital satisfaction and anger. In fact, there is good reason to believe that the relative associations of these related but independent affective constructs with marital satisfaction may vary. For instance, functionalist approaches distinguish anger from fear based on the notion that anger is intended to “remove an obstacle to a goal, whereas fear functions to avoid a threat” (Witherington & Crichton, 2007, p. 629). Furthermore, during social interactions, expression of anger leads to greater increases in negative communication than expression of other negative emotions, like sadness (Sanford, 2007). Hence, expressions of anger during marital interaction might undermine marital adjustment to a greater extent than expression of sadness or distress. In fact, based on such findings, some couples therapies have moved to encourage partners to express the distress or hurt that might underlie anger, which is commonly seen as more problematic in distressed relationships (e.g., Epstein and Baucom, 2002 and Jacobson and Christensen, 1996). This distinction in the literature on marital satisfaction and emotional expression raises the question of whether and how personality-based individual differences in various forms of negative affect, particularly angry hostility versus depression and anxiety, might differ in their associations with marital satisfaction. Although these three facets of neuroticism clearly share common variance, they are distinguishable. A high level of any particular personality facet is theoretically linked to a higher likelihood of experiencing and expressing the other associated emotions. To date, however, research on personality traits and relationship satisfaction has primarily focused on broad dispositions, such as negative and positive affect (e.g., Donnellan et al., 2004 and Robins et al., 2000; see also review by Karney and Bradbury (1995)). Based on the theory and research discussed above, it is plausible that the angry hostility facet of trait neuroticism would be more strongly related to marital dissatisfaction than the anxiety or depression aspects of trait neuroticism. Moreover, it is also plausible that other facets of neuroticism (e.g., self-consciousness, vulnerability) may be related to the marital relationship in unique ways. These other facets, however, do not have analogues in research on symptoms of emotional distress and marital adjustment that bolster this type of distinction. When considering effects of negative emotions on marital satisfaction, one must attend to both actor effects (i.e., effects of a person’s own affect on their own marital adjustment) and partner effects (i.e., effects of one’s partner’s affect). For example, Robins and colleagues (2000) found that, although trait negative and positive emotionality both exhibited actor effects on marital satisfaction in men and women, only neuroticism exhibited partner effects for both men and women. Similarly, in a recent study of psychopathology, Whisman and colleagues (2004) found significant actor effects of both anxiety and depressive symptoms on marital satisfaction in both men and women, but significant partner effects only for depressive symptoms. Although this type of research is growing, no study has yet included anger in an investigation of the relative strength of actor and partner effects of negative affectivity on marital satisfaction. Such research is important, given the common co-occurrence of anger with other negative emotions, such as anxiety or depressive symptoms. Moreover, because the interpersonal message communicated by expression of anger is quite distinct from that conveyed by sadness or distress, they may have particularly different partner effects, with a propensity toward anger being more deleterious for partners’ marital satisfaction than a propensity toward anxiety or depression. Additionally, one must attend to potential sex differences in the associations of marital satisfaction with personality or other variables. In general, women report higher levels of both relationship satisfaction (e.g., Davila et al., 2003 and Sakalli-Ugurlu, 2003) and trait neuroticism than men (e.g., Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001). Although we identified no studies of sex differences in the specific facets of neuroticism, research in psychopathology suggests that women are also more likely to experience both depressive and anxiety disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). In contrast, men and women appear to experience anger equally, although men are more likely to engage in physical forms of aggression (Archer, 2004). Researchers who have investigated possible sex differences in the association of these various constructs with marital satisfaction have reported mixed results, with some studies finding equivalent associations for men and women (e.g., Baron et al., 2007 and Senchak and Leonard, 1994), others finding greater relative effects of these types of variables on women’s marital satisfaction (e.g., Davila et al., 2003 and Herr et al., 2007; Monnier, Cameron, Hobfoll, & Gribble, 2002), and still others finding greater relative effects on men’s marital satisfaction (e.g., Fincham et al., 1997 and Johns et al., 2007). Due to the mixture of findings, we examined potential sex differences in our sample, but made no a priori hypotheses regarding differential associations for men and women. The current study addresses the issues raised above in a sample of middle-aged and older couples married for at least 5 years. We examined the relative strength of actor and partner effects of the anxiety, angry hostility, and depression facets of neuroticism on marital satisfaction in both men and women. For actor effects, we expected that some associations of these three negative affective traits would be overlapping, and therefore simultaneous associations would differ from their individual univariate associations. Further, based on emotion theory and prior empirical findings (e.g., Sanford, 2007), we expected that partner effects of angry hostility on marital satisfaction would be larger than those of the depression and anxiety facets of neuroticism.