Fire And Ice Essay Sample

The research focused on the effects of partner hostile responsiveness and three types of withdrawing responses (intimacy avoidance, conflict avoidance, and angry withdrawal) on the marital relationship. The study aimed at explaining how each of the respective factors affected marital outcomes for either men or women.

The study used a self-report methodology to describe the marital outcomes and identify the meaning of responses to the partner’s hostility and withdrawal. Couples were selected from the pool of participants in the Buffalo Newlywed Study that involved a large sample of heterogeneous couples. The couples were involved after they performed a one-year follow-up assessment and completed their questionnaires either in the course of a laboratory investigation or returned them by mail in separate envelopes filled by husband and wife.

The results of the investigation showed that partner hostile responsiveness and withdrawing responses were a serious disrupting factor in the marriage. However, wives reacted more strongly to the partner hostility while withdrawal did not augment their negative feelings quite as much. For husbands, on the contrary, withdrawal produced greater results. These results are inconsistent with the traditional gender roles of “nagging, hostile wife” and “uninvolved, withdrawn husband” (Roberts, 2000, p.705). In contrast, husbands’ conflict avoidance helped buffer the negative effect for women while for men it contributed to further distress.

Fincham, F., & Beach, S.R. (2002). Forgiveness in Marriage: Implications in psychological aggression and constructive communication. Personal Relationships 9, 239-251.
The authors asked the question whether forgiveness in marriage could serve as a reliable predictor of psychological aggression and constructive communication. The research question is grounded in the need to examine marital forgiveness in a two-dimensional context.

The study was based upon the examination of 44 couples in their first year of marriage recruited from the registry in South Wales, UK, mostly in their late 20s-early 30s, having completed a post-high school degree. Psychological aggression was evaluated on the Spouse Specific Aggression Scale. Forgiveness was evaluated by responses to two possible events: spouse insulting the one verbally and threatening to abuse physically. The Marriage Adjustment Test is taken to be a measure of marital satisfaction.

The results of the study show that a two-dimensional model including positive and negative outcomes is better fitted to describe marital forgiveness than a one-dimensional one. Self-reported measures and reports by the partner assessing the actual behavior of the couple were supporting each other and demonstrated correlation. Thus, wives who reported themselves to be unforgiving to their husband were often found to be unforgiving by husbands themselves. The effects observed were found to be stable irrespective of the marital satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Van Buren, A. (2002). The Relationship of Verbal-Nonverbal Incongruence to Communication Mismatches in Married Couples. North American Journal of Psychology 4.1, 21-36.

The study aimed at evaluating misunderstandings that can occur in married couples because transmission of an emotional message from one partner to the other requires extra effort.

The research involved 24 married couples that engaged in 10-minute videotaped interaction, rating emotional meanings in the responses of others. All couples were Caucasian, drawn from lists supplied by local priests and rabbis, with a 94% response rate to the survey. The raters all had a background in Psychology and had received special training related to the experiment. Interaction events were evaluated by spouses on the Talk Table designed by Gottman et al. where they circled the answer the rated their communication style and intended meaning.

The results demonstrated the expected misunderstanding between the meaning intended by the speaker and the one perceived by the listener. This misunderstanding was the strongest when the speaker’s words were accompanied by the perceived verbal-nonverbal incongruence, that is, nonverbal actions disagreed with the said message. However, evaluations were more strongly correlated with verbal than non-verbal contexts.

Kinnunen, U., & Feldt, T. (2004). Economic stress and marital adjustment among couples: analyses at the dyadic level. European Journal of Social Psychology 34, 519-532.

The study focused on examination of impact of economic stress on the level of marital adjustment in couples. It concentrated on the couple, evaluating responses on a dyadic level, within the LISREL framework. The research model tested in the study involved components such as spouses’ monthly incomes, their relative length of unemployment, linked to economic strain that is further linked to psychological distress and then on marital adjustment.

Selecting the random sample from the population of 1878 couples, researchers received responses from 609 couples and 851 persons (48% of men and 52% of women).

The results confirmed the advanced hypothesis that the basic path from economic circumstances to marital distress coincided with the one suggested in the framework. The same model applied to couples that enjoyed a comfortable socioeconomic situation. Men’s employment proved a significant factor that influenced the wife’s marital adjustment and had overall impact on the family. Conclusion was also reached about the link of psychological distress in one partner to that of the other one.

Schneewind, K., & Gerdard, A-K. (2002). Relationship Personality, Conflict Resolution, and Marital Satisfaction in the First 5 Years of Marriage. Family Relations 51, 63-71.  

The study examines the relationship between couples’ stable personality variables describing their interpersonal competencies and marital satisfaction. The marital satisfaction is linked to the conflict resolution style which is assumed to be a mediating factor in the relationship. The crucial personality variables are assumed to be introversion versus extroversion and emotional stability versus emotional instability (neuroticism). Some patterns of relationship personality was assumed to generate lasting vulnerabilities in marriage that necessitated recourse to adaptive processes.

Participants included 83 couples that took part in the study over the span of five years with annual intervals between research sessions. Only couples with stable measurements on all six research points were selected for the analysis. The measures included relationship personality, conflict resolution scales, and relationship satisfaction.

The conflict resolution style was found to retain significance over the years. Formed in the first year of marriage, this style is impacted by relationship personality variables. There are also implications for preventive intervention in the early time of marriage with the purpose of helping the couple find their conflict resolution style. The mediational framework for conflict resolution proved to be correct as a result of the study, supported by evidence from the research.

Relationship between Articles

All five of the articles focus on marital relationships, predominantly targeting marriages in their early years, from the first to the fifth year of marriage. This makes the results of the studies relevant to designing and implementing a strategy of intervention that would target improvement in the relationships in the early years of marriage.

Although the studies focus on different factors on marriage, all of them explore the same outcome – the influence of the relevant factor on marriage happiness and overall satisfaction. In fact, the articles can be combined to answer a single question: “What makes people satisfied or dissatisfied during marriage?” The articles provide information as to the influence exerted by a variety of factors including economic circumstances (Kinnunen, Feldt, 2004), relationship personality variables (Schneewind, Gerdard, 2002), communication mismatches and verbal-nonverbal congruence (Van Buren, 2002), forgiveness in marriage (Fincham, Beach, 2002), and hostile and withdrawal behaviors (Roberts, 2000). Such a wide spectrum of influencing factors permits the researcher evaluate more or less objectively a large part of issues related to marriage problems.

Conclusions of the articles cannot be compared directly since they naturally differ because of their relationship to different outcomes caused by different investigation problems. In most cases, the initial hypotheses have been partially or fully confirmed.

A Proposal for Future Research

The review of the research to date demonstrates that the problem of marital adjustment and related factors has received intensive coverage. The interest of researchers can be attributed to the crucial importance of the beginning of marriage in defining the subsequent success of the endeavour. The examination of diverse factors permits the scholars to discover ways to invent interventions that can make marriages more effective and more durable.

Future research can concentrate on the evaluation of other factors that can make a difference in marital relationships. For example, research can analyze the dependence between parental marriage, its stability and parents’ level of marital adjustment and satisfaction on the children’s predictable patterns. A study can assess this influence in case one partner comes from a successful marital background, and the other one from an unsuccessful one, as opposed to the partners both sharing “good” or “bad” family backgrounds.

Alternatively, a new study could target comprehensive survey of relative value of this or that factor in determining marriage happiness. Couples can be first asked to self-report factors that they believe are important for their happiness, rating their negative or positive influences. Then each of the factors can be evaluated through rigorous scientific procedures, applying the appropriate tool designed at this point. For instance, instruments like the Talk Table designed by Gottman et al. can be used to determine emotional responses on an appropriate scale.

Researchers can then make comparisons between self-reported scores and research findings. Perhaps new, unexpected factors can come up as determinants of marital adjustment. For example, couples that had had a lot of partners before can be better or worse adjusted to married life. The sexual attractiveness of partners, their cooking abilities, attitude toward money, and common ideas for free time can all become factors determining happiness in married life. It is also interesting to assess the relative impact of these factors. For example, research can ask whether couples with strained economic circumstances will experience distress no matter how united they are on the issue of spending free time.

References

Fincham, F., & Beach, S.R. (2002). Forgiveness in Marriage: Implications in psychological aggression and constructive communication. Personal Relationships 9, 239-251.

Kinnunen, U., & Feldt, T. (2004). Economic stress and marital adjustment among couples: analyses at the dyadic level. European Journal of Social Psychology 34, 519-532.

Roberts, L.J. (2000, August). Fire and Ice in Marital Communication: Hostile and Distancing Behaviors as Predictors of Marital Distress. Journal of Marriage and Family 62, 693-707.

Schneewind, K., & Gerdard, A-K. (2002). Relationship Personality, Conflict Resolution, and Marital Satisfaction in the First 5 Years of Marriage. Family Relations 51, 63-71.  

Van Buren, A. (2002). The Relationship of Verbal-Nonverbal Incongruence to Communication Mismatches in Married Couples. North American Journal of Psychology 4.1, 21-36.