• Do Men and Women Show Love Differently in Marriage?
  Presented by: Carrie A. Bredow, Elizabeth A. Schoenfeld, Ted L. Huston

• Marital Quality Across the American Life Course
  Presented by: Spencer L. James, Paul R. Amato

• Influence of Intra- and Inter-personal Factors on Marriage: A Dyadic Model
  Presented by: Amy Laura Arnold, Catie Walker O'Neal, Chalandra Bryant

• Marital Confidence, Positive Couple Behaviors, and Marital Satisfaction
  Presented by: Matthew Johnson, Jared Anderson

Abstracts

Do Men and Women Show Love Differently in Marriage?

Presented by: Carrie A. Bredow, Elizabeth A. Schoenfeld, Ted L. Huston

Diary data collected from 168 married couples were used to test Cancian's (1986) thesis that men and women show their love differently in intimate relationships. Multi-level analyses found partial support for this position. Although men and women were equally likely to express love through behaving affectionately, women were more likely than men to show love by suppressing negativity and men were more likely than women to show love by initiating sex, sharing leisure activities with their spouses, and performing housework alongside their wives (versus alone). The total number of household tasks performed was not linked to love for either gender.

Marital Quality Across the American Life Course

Presented by: Spencer L. James, Paul R. Amato

The quality of marriage is important to many scholars. In this paper, we aim to contribute by furthering our understanding of how marital quality changes with marital duration. We examine how marital happiness, marital interaction, divorce proneness, marital problems, and marital conflict changed over a 20 year period in a sample of people married three years or less in 1980. We find that the various dimensions of marital quality do not exhibit the expected trajectories of either a u-shaped curve or continuous decline, thus furthering our understanding of how marital quality covaries with marital duration in a nationally representative sample.

Influence of Intra- and Inter-personal Factors on Marriage: A Dyadic Model

Presented by: Amy Laura Arnold, Catie Walker O'Neal, Chalandra Bryant

The current study examines the manner in which psychosocial resources are linked to marital interactions and marital success among newlywed African American couples using the actor partner interdependence model and social exchange theory. Findings supported the presence of actor effects for both husbands' and wives' personal resources on marital success. Findings also supported the presence of a partner effect for husbands' personal resources on wives' marital success. However, these relationships were at least partially mediated by partners' interactional warmth suggesting that the relationship is primarily due to, or facilitated by, the influence of intrapersonal resources on interpersonal exchanges.

Marital Confidence, Positive Couple Behaviors, and Marital Satisfaction

Presented by: Matthew Johnson, Jared Anderson

Using three waves of dyadic data from a community-based sample of 610 newly married couples (1,220 individuals), we examined the relationship between marital confidence, positive couple behaviors, and marital satisfaction using a modified actor-partner interdependence model. Results indicate that after controlling for marital satisfaction at Time 1, higher marital confidence at Time 1 significantly increased one's own positive couple behaviors at Time 2 and marital satisfaction at Time 3 for both husbands and wives. Higher levels of positive couple behaviors at Time 2 increased one's own relationship satisfaction at Time 3 and wives' behaviors informed husbands' satisfaction.