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Abstract
This study examines the connection between newlyweds' personality, behavior in marriage during the first two and a half years of marriage, and marital satisfaction. Personality was expected to affect marital behavior which, in turn, was theorized to affect marital satisfaction.
Data were collected in three phases at yearly intervals. The present research is based on 103 couples who stayed married and who completed all three phases of data collection. A face-to-face interview and a specialized series of nine telephone interviews focused on activities and interaction were used each year for data collection. During the first face-to-face interview, husbands and wives completed Cattell's 16PF personality inventory. Telephone interviews were used to obtain data about the frequency with which husbands and wives expressed affection and negativity. The reports of positive or negative affective behaviors were aggregated across days and across Phases 1-3 in order to enhance the reliability of the derived measures and to capture stable behavioral patterns. The Marital Opinion Questionnaire, a global assessment of each spouse's marital satisfaction, was used during the third phase face-to-face interviews so as to capture the cumulative import of personality and behavior.
Results demonstrated clear evidence for the relationship between personality factors and martial behaviors. Husbands' and wives' tender-mindedness, or sensitivity, predicted the extent to which they were affectionate. Husbands' and wives' level of trust predicted their partners' negativity. Husbands' factors of shrewd and tense predicted their own negativity. Both husbands' and wives' anxiety significantly predicted husbands' level of negativity and wives' independence significantly predicted their own negativity. Partial support was found for the mediational function of marital behaviors since only negativity was found to mediate between personality and marital satisfaction. Husbands' negativity mediated between their own anxiety and both their own and their wives' marital satisfaction. The results supported the literature which emphasizes the importance of anxiety and negativity in predicting marital quality. The discussion integrated the results with the personality and behavioral areas of research on marital satisfaction, highlighting gender differences and implications for therapy and future research.
