Marital Interaction: a Window onto Family Functioning

We examined the impact of job stress and physical exhaustion on the physiological and subjective components of emotional responding during marital interactions between 19 male police officers and their spouses. Couples completed 3D-day stress diaries and participated in 4 weekly laboratory interaction sessions. During interactions on days of greater stress, both spouses were more physiologically aroused, husbands reported less positive and more negative emotion, and wives reported less emotion (both positive and negative). On days of greater exhaustion, husbands were more physiologically aroused. All of these findings are indicators of heightened risk for poor marital outcomes and thus document an emotional mechanism by which job stress and exhaustion can negatively impact marriage.