A Study of Husbands and Wives from Dual-Career and Traditional-Career Families

Husbands and wives of dual-career families were compared with husbands and wives of traditional-career families on the variables of inner-directedness, self-actualizing values, existentiality, self-regard, and self-acceptance. Also, comparisons between the two sets of couples were made on shared and unshared interests. Our findings indicate that the husbands and wives in our sample of dual-career families do not differ in major ways from our sample of husbands and wives of traditional-career families; however, in every instance of difference, the direction of difference supports the view that husbands and wives of dual-career families are more inner-directed and flexible in applying personal values than husbands and wives of traditional-career families.     

Preferences for Careers and Organisational Cultures as a Function of Logically Related Personality Traits

La coherence attendue entre des traits de personnalité et d'une part des choix de carrière, d'autre part des préférences pour des types de culture organisationnelle a été examinée en termes de parallélisme conceptuel différentiel. On s'est aperçu que, dans un grand échantillon d'adultes britanniques, les rapprochements dépendaient de l'existence d'un recouvrement logique entre un trait de personnalité et une préférence. Quand un choix de carrière ou une dimension culturelle était logiquement reliéà in trait de personnalité, les variations interpersonelles sur ce trait étaient significativement associées aux choix culturels ou de carrière. Dans d'autres cas, le personnalité n'était pas pertinente. Les résultats confirment certains aspects du modèle attraction-sélection-désintérêt et précisent en particulier les origines des effets différentiels de personnalité dans ce modèle et d'autres analogues.
Expected consistency between personality traits and preferences for particular career anchors and for forms of organisational culture was examined in terms of differential conceptual alignment. In a large sample of British adults, associations were found to depend on the presence of logical overlap between a personality trait and a preferred outcome. When a career anchor or a cultural feature was logically related to a personality trait, between-person variations in that trait were significantly associated with career or cultural preferences. In other cases, personality was irrelevant. Findings support aspects of the attraction-selection-attrition model, and more precisely specify the basis of differential personality effects in that and similar models.     

Pathways Between Marriage and Parenting for Wives and Husbands: The Role of Coparenting

As family systems research has expanded, so have investigations into how marital partners coparent together. Although coparenting research has increasingly found support for the influential role of coparenting on both marital relationships and parenting practices, coparenting has traditionally been investigated as part of an indirect system which begins with marital health, is mediated by coparenting processes, and then culminates in each partner's parenting. The field has not tested how this traditional model compares with the equally plausible alternative model, in which coparenting simultaneously predicts both marital relationships and parenting practices. Furthermore, statistical and practical limitations have typically resulted in only one parent being analyzed in these models. This study used model-fitting analyses to include both wives and husbands in a test of these two alternative models of the role of coparenting in the family system. Our data suggested that both the traditional indirect model (marital health to coparenting to parenting practices), and the alternative predictor model where coparenting alliance directly and simultaneously predicts marital health and parenting practices, fit for both spouses. This suggests that dynamic and multiple roles may be played by coparenting in the overall family system, and raises important practical implications for family clinicians.     

Explaining the Sense of Family Coherence Among Husbands and Wives: The Israeli Case

ABSTRACT

This study examined variables belonging to the family environment that explain the sense of family coherence among husbands (n = 133) and wives (n = 133) in Israel. Specifically, the explanatory variables tested were spousal power relations (as expressed in equality in the division of household labor and decision making), and perceived family conflict. In general, the sense of family coherence among spouses was found to be high. Perceived family conflict contributed to explaining the sense of family coherence for both husbands and wives. Equality in the division of household labor and in decision making had a greater impact on husbands than wives. Family coherence correlated negatively with age for husbands and positively with income for wives. The explanatory variables had a greater impact on the sense of family coherence among husbands than among wives.     

老年人配偶支持的特点及其与夫妻依恋、婚姻满意度的关系

分别从实际和期望支持、情感和物质支持两个维度考察了老年人配偶支持的特点,并且采用结构方程模型来检验配偶支持、夫妻依恋和婚姻满意度三者之间的关系.289位有配偶的城市社区老年人参加了本次问卷调查,年龄范围为60～88岁.重要他人问卷、老年人夫妻依恋问卷及Locke-Wallace婚姻调适测定问卷分别用来测量老年人的配偶支持、夫妻依恋和婚姻满意度情况.结果表明:(1)性别、年龄及受教育水平不同的老年人在配偶支持上存在显著差异;(2)老年人的配偶支持与夫妻依恋和婚姻满意度三者两两相关,配偶支持以夫妻依恋为中介影响婚姻满意度.     

Positive Personality Traits as Predictors of Psychotherapy Progress

Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy - The objectives of this paper were to study if the traits of the Positive Personality Model (PPM; de la Iglesia and Castro Solano, in Front Psychol 9:2025,...     

Personality and Temperament Correlates of Marital Satisfaction

Participants (166 married couples, ages 20–85) were administered marital satisfaction and Pleasantness-Arousability-Dominance temperament scales. Participants with more pleasant and more dominant temperaments, and those who had mates with more pleasant temperaments, were happier in their marriages. Temperament accounted for substantially more variance (30%–34% in marital satisfaction than effect sizes reported in the personality/marital satisfaction literature. Because Pleasantness is a general index of psychological adjustment, findings implied that better adjusted persons, and those with better adjusted mates, were more satisfied in marriage. Unpleasant and submissive (i.e., depressed) wives were highly dissatisfied in marriage. Although intermate temperament similarity on Pleasantness and Dominance (but not on Arousability) correlated positively with marital satisfaction, similarity was a weaker and somewhat misleading predictor of satisfaction in comparison to findings when individual temperament scores were treated as separate variables. Also, weak results showed individuals selected mates with temperaments similar to their own.     

Sexual Attitudes of Males and Females as Predictors of Interpersonal Attraction and Marital Compatibility1

Two investigations examine the effect of similarity of sexual attitudes on (a) attraction to a stranger and (b) marital sexual satisfaction. In an experiment using undergraduates, manipulation of subject-stranger similarity in general affective orientation to sexuality affected attraction and other evaluative dependent variables. In the second investigation, married couples revealed sexual attitudes and sexual satisfaction. Husbands and wives were similar (r= 0.58, p < 0.001) in their affective orientations to sexuality. Discrepancy between the partners’ scores predicted sexual dissatisfaction in both partners. In addition, the wife's affective orientation to sexuality predicted more indices of sexual satisfaction and adjustment in both the wife and the husband than did the husband's affective orientation to sexuality. Finally, spouses with a positive affective orientation to sexuality were more accurate when judging their partner's sexual enjoyment, compared to spouses with a negative orientation. The findings have implications for the effects of similarity of attitudes on interpersonal attraction and on relationship quality.     

Identifying Causes of Disagreement Between Self-Reports and Spouse Ratings of Personality

Self-reports and spouse ratings of personality traits typically show less-than-perfect agreement, but powerful moderators of agreement have not yet been identified. In Study 1, 47 married couples completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory to describe themselves and their spouses. Extent of agreement was not consistently moderated by response sets; the age, intelligence, or education of the respondent; or the length or quality of the relationship. In Study 2 these couples were interviewed about reasons for substantial disagreements, and an audiotape was content-analyzed. Sixteen reasons were reliably coded, including idiosyncratic understanding of items, reference to different time frames or roles, and unavailability of covert experience to the spouse. Faking good, assumed similarity, and other variables prominent in the psychometric literature were relatively unimportant. Findings (1) suggest that attempts to improve the validity of self-reports and ratings may need to be refocused and (2) underscore the desirability of routinely obtaining multiple sources of information on personality.     

Personality Traits as Potential Susceptibility Markers: Differential Susceptibility to Support Among Parents

In this study, we examined whether parents are differentially susceptible to support from their spouse and adolescent child depending on their personality traits, and whether differences in susceptibility to support among parents, in turn, are linked to the quality of support parents give to their children. Participants in this three‐wave longitudinal study were 288 two‐parent Dutch families with an adolescent child. Fathers were on average 43.9 years old (SD = 3.7 years), mothers were 41.7 years old (SD = 3.3 years), and adolescents (50% girls) were 14.5 years old (SD = 0.8 years). We found that the association between support from children toward their parents and subsequent support from parents toward their children was more pronounced for parents high on Openness, for better and for worse. Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability did not emerge as markers of differences in susceptibility. Also, parents did not differ in their susceptibility to support from their spouse, nor were differences in susceptibility found a year later when using data from a third wave. We found very modest support for differential susceptibility, only for Openness, and depending on the source of perceived support and on the timing of measurement.     

Specific Personality Traits and General Personality Dysfunction as Predictors of the Presence and Severity of Personality Disorders in a Clinical Sample

This study examined the associations of specific personality traits and general personality dysfunction in relation to the presence and severity of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM–IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) personality disorders in a Dutch clinical sample. Two widely used measures of specific personality traits were selected, the Revised NEO Personality Inventory as a measure of normal personality traits, and the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology-Basic Questionnaire as a measure of pathological traits. In addition, 2 promising measures of personality dysfunction were selected, the General Assessment of Personality Disorder and the Severity Indices of Personality Problems. Theoretically predicted associations were found between the measures, and all measures predicted the presence and severity of DSM–IV personality disorders. The combination of general personality dysfunction models and personality traits models provided incremental information about the presence and severity of personality disorders, suggesting that an integrative approach of multiple perspectives might serve comprehensive assessment of personality disorders.     

Early Personality Traits as Predictors of Mortality Risk Following Conjugal Bereavement

ABSTRACT This study explored pre-bereavement personality traits and gender as predictors of post-widowhood mortality risk, using newly derived life span data for participants originally recruited for Lewis Terman's classic study of the gifted. Personality traits measured in 1940 were used to predict mortality risk from 1940 through 2004 for married participants who were either widowed between 1940 and 1986 or who remained married. Results indicated that widowhood predicted a decrease in mortality risk for these (intelligent) individuals (relative hazard [ rh ]=0.68, N =843, p <.001) and neuroticism significantly moderated this effect. Specifically, neuroticism in young adulthood was significantly associated with decreased mortality risk among men who were later widowed ( rh =0.50, N =66, p <.02) but not among women or consistently married men. Conclusions reveal the importance of personality–situation interactions and the adoption of a long-term perspective.