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This is a report on what predicts the deterioration of affective marital interaction over a 4-year period. Four models were compared for their ability to predict Time-2 dysfunctional marital interaction (a set of reliable predictors of marital dissolution). These four models were: (1) baseline physiology at Time-1; (2) interaction physiology at Time-1; (3) a balance model based on the ratio of positivity to negativity at Time-1; and, (4) cognitions about the relationship operationalized from our coding of the Oral History Interview. All four models predicted Time-2 dysfunctional marital interaction. All four models were also able to predict change, operationalized as predicting Time-2 interaction, controlling for Time-1 interaction, that is, using a covariance regression analysis. The most powerful model in predicting change was the balance ratio model.
Fam Proc 38:143-158,1999
THIS is a report of a longitudinal study of marital interaction over time. The question addressed in this article is what is there about Time-1 interaction that predicts Time-2 variables that have been found to be the predictors of divorce as well as changes in these variables.
In this report, we examine patterns of emotional expression during nonimprovised marital conflict resolution, in which the real conflict issues were determined by the couple, and across a longer, nonnormative period of 4 years. We have limited ourselves to the domain of emotion because investigators in the area of marital interaction have concluded from the data that emotional expression forms the best set of correlates of marital satisfaction (for a review see Gottman, 1994). In fact, most studies have summarized their data as either positive or negative interaction, variously defined. Furthermore, we have found emotional patterns of interaction predictive of marital stability or dissolution (Gottman, 1993; Gottman, 1994; Gottman & Levenson, 1992).
To briefly summarize the results of these divorce predictions: in three separate longitudinal studies, it was possible to identify specific dysfunctional patterns of conflict resolution that predicted a couple's cascade toward divorce (Gottman, 1994; Gottman, Coan, Carrere, & Swanson, 1998; Gottman & Levenson, 1992). Similar results have been replicated in other laboratories (Matthews, Wickrama, & Conger, 1996). In these studies, the most consistent specific affective predictors of divorce during the resolution of conflict were: disgust, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling, domineering, and belligerence (see Methods section for a...