Modeling a Married Couple’s Reciprocal Relationship

Relationship Quality among Cohabiting versus Married Couples

Similarity, convergence, and relationship satisfaction in dating and married couples.

The current work investigates how personality and interpersonal processes combine to predict change in relationship quality. Measures of personality and emotion similarity were collected during laboratory interactions from a cross-sectional sample of dating couples (Study 1) and a 1-year longitudinal study of newlywed married couples (Study 2). Results showed that emotion similarity mediated th...

Testing the Investment Model of Relationship Commitment and Stability in a Longitudinal Study of Married Couples

This study tested Rusbult’s (1980, 1983) investment model of relationship commitment and stability using data from both partners of 3,627 married couples. As predicted, spouses’ satisfaction, investments, and quality of alternatives were unique predictors of their commitment to the marital relationship. Additionally, commitment assessed at the initial testing predicted marital termination or st...

Pension plan participation among married couples.

We present descriptive statistics on pension participation and types of pensions among married couples, using data from the 1996/2008 Panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation and Social Security administrative records. Previous research has focused on pension coverage by marital status, but has not examined couples as a unit. Because couples usually share income, viewing them as...

Forgiveness and Cardiovascular Functioning in Married Couples

Few studies have investigated the physiology underlying forgiveness, and those that have ignore the intimate relationship context. The present study, therefore, examined blood pressure and myocardial oxygen consumption, 2 indices of cardiovascular functioning, in a sample of married couples (n 90) recruited from the community. Both trait forgiveness and forgiveness specific to the spouse (dyadi...