Are Changes in Marital Satisfaction Sustained and Steady, or Sporadic and Dramatic?

Although prominent theories of intimate relationships, and couples themselves, often conceive of relationships as fluctuating widely in their degree of closeness, longitudinal studies generally describe partners' satisfaction as stable and continuous or as steadily declining over time. The increasin...

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Publicado en:American Psychologist Vol. 79; no. 2; pp. 225 - 241
Autores principales: Joiner, Raquael J., Bradbury, Thomas N., Lavner, Justin A., Meltzer, Andrea L., McNulty, James K., Neff, Lisa A., Karney, Benjamin R.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: American Psychological Association Feb2024
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Feb2024
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      pub: American Psychological Association
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        atl: Are Changes in Marital Satisfaction Sustained and Steady, or Sporadic and Dramatic?
      aug:
        au:
          Joiner, Raquael J.
          Bradbury, Thomas N.
          Lavner, Justin A.
          Meltzer, Andrea L.
          McNulty, James K.
          Neff, Lisa A.
          Karney, Benjamin R.
        affil:
          Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles
          Department of Psychology, University of Georgia
          Department of Psychology, Florida State University
          Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Texas, Austin
      su:
        Spouses
        Marital satisfaction
        Psychological stress
        Statistical models
        Research funding
        Descriptive statistics
        Longitudinal method
      sug:
        subj:
          Spouses
          Marital satisfaction
          Psychological stress
          Statistical models
          Research funding
          Descriptive statistics
          Longitudinal method
      keyword:
        group-based trajectory models
        growth mixture modeling
        marital dissolution
        marital satisfaction
        newlywed couples
        group-based trajectory models
        growth mixture modeling
        marital dissolution
        marital satisfaction
        newlywed couples
      ab: Although prominent theories of intimate relationships, and couples themselves, often conceive of relationships as fluctuating widely in their degree of closeness, longitudinal studies generally describe partners' satisfaction as stable and continuous or as steadily declining over time. The increasing use of group-based trajectory models (GBTMs) to identify distinct classes of change has reinforced this characterization, but these models fail to account for individual differences within classes and within-person variability across classes and may thus misrepresent how couples' satisfaction changes. The goal of the current analyses was to determine whether accounting for these additional sources of variance through growth mixture models (GMMs) alters characterizations of satisfaction changes over time. Applied to longitudinal data from 12 independent studies of first-married couples (combined N = 1,249 couples), GMMs that allowed for class-specific individual differences and within-person variability fit the data better than the GBTMs that constrained these to be equal across classes. Most notably, considerable within-person variability was evident within each class, consistent with the idea that spouses do indeed fluctuate in their satisfaction. Spouses who dissolved their marriages were 3.8-5.7 times more likely to be in classes characterized by greater volatility in satisfaction. Because the early years of marriage appear to be characterized by within-person fluctuations in satisfaction, timevarying correlates of these fluctuations are likely to be at least as important as time-invariant correlates in explaining why some marriages thrive where others falter.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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