Witnessing interparental conflict, feeling caught, and mental health: A conditional process analysis involving parental confirmation and divorce status

This study tested parental confirmation and divorce as moderators of the direct and indirect effects of witnessing interparental conflict (i.e., demand/withdraw patterns and aggression) on young adults’ mental health through feelings of being caught between parents. Participants included 493 young adults from first-marriage and post-divorce families. Conditional process analyses revealed that both parental confirmation and divorce status moderated the positive association between demand/withdraw patterns and feeling caught. Each parent’s aggression toward their (ex)spouse reduced the inverse association between confirmation and children feeling caught. Father confirmation moderated the indirect effect of witnessing parents’ demand/withdraw patterns on young adults’ mental health via their feelings of being caught, and this moderation was conditioned by divorce status. Consequently, parents may find that confirmation provides a sense of relational reassurance that softens the more immediate distress that their children experience when witnessing their disputes and feeling caught.

Personality Types and Patterns of Marital Conflict among Married Staff of Selected Universities in Southwest Nigeria

This study investigated the personality types and patterns of marital conflict among the staff of universities in southwest Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. 1330 married staff members, proportionately selected from nine universities, using a multi-stage sampling technique, constituted the study sample. Prevalence of Patterns of Marital Interaction Questionnaire (PPMIQ) and Personality Type Questionnaire (PTQ) were used to collect data for the study. The results showed that 67.1% of the staff indicated that they experienced demand-withdraw pattern, while 26.8% experienced constructive pattern. Only 6.1% experienced a destructive pattern. The results also showed that the largest percentage of the staff (20.3%) indicated that the possessed Introverted Intuitive personality while 16.9% and 16.8% demonstrated Extroverted Thinking and Extroverted Feeling personalities respectively. The smallest percentage (1.9%) demonstrated Introverted Sensational Personality. Also, from the result of this study, it is obvious that married staff in universities in southwest Nigeria have one form of marital conflict or the other. Furthermore, based on the results of the analysis, it could be concluded that all three patterns of marital conflict are being experienced by the married staff. The demand-withdraw pattern, however, appeared to be the typical pattern among the married staff.

Crenshaw et al (in press) - Relative importance of conflict topics for within-couple tests

Researchers commonly employ observational methods, in which partners discuss topics of concern to them, to test gender differences and other within-couple differences in couple conflict behavior. We describe a previously-unidentified assumption upon which statistical tests in these observational studies are frequently reliant: whether each partner is more concerned or dissatisfied with the topic selected for them than the partner is. We term this the relative importance assumption and show that common procedures for selecting conflict discussion topics can lead to widespread violations of the assumption in empirical studies. Study 1 conducts a systematic review of the literature and finds that few existing studies ensure relative importance is met. Study 2 uses two empirical samples to estimate how often relative importance is violated when not ensured, finding it is violated in one-third of interaction tasks. Study 3 examines the potential consequences of violating the relative importance assumption when testing within-couple differences in observed behavior, focusing on gender differences in the demand/withdraw pattern. Results show that these tests were profoundly impacted by violations of relative importance. In light of these violations, we conduct a more rigorous test of demand/withdraw theories and clarify previously-inconsistent results in the literature. We recommend explicit consideration of relative importance for studies testing within-couple effects, provide methodological recommendations for selecting topics in future studies, and discuss implications for clinical practice.