The authors used a vulnerability-stress-adaptation framework to examine personality traits and chronic stress as predictors of the developmental course of physical aggression in the early years of marriage. Additionally, personality traits and physical aggression were examined as predictors of the developmental course of chronic stress. Data from…

Attempted to identify predictors of positive treatment outcome following behavioral marital therapy. The only variable that significantly predicted outcome at both posttest and follow-up was a measure reflecting traditional affiliation/independence patterns: couples with a highly affiliative wife and a highly independent husband were less likely…

Examined psychological aggression by self and partner, physical aggression by partner, and marital dissatisfaction as longitudinal predictors of instances of physical aggression during marriage from a sample of engaged couples. Found that psychological aggression by self and partner predicted initial incidents of physical aggression in marriage,…

Examined couples' response to marital therapy at termination and 4 years posttreatment for 55 couples receiving either behavioral or insight-oriented marital therapy. Couples were more likely to be divorced or maritally distressed four years posttreatment if intake measures reflected high levels of negative marital affect, poor problem-solving…

Couples planning marriage participated in a longitudinal study examining the predictive power of communication ratings. Intact couples (N=9) completed data at three follow-up points. Results indicated the more positively premarital couples rated their communication, the more satisfied they were with their relationship five-and-a-half-years later.…

Marital adjustment, verbal aggression, and physical aggression have long been associated in the marital literature, but the nature of their associations remains unclear. In this study, the authors examined these 3 constructs as risk factors for physical aggression during the first 2 years of marriage in 634 couples recruited as they applied for…

Forty undergraduate judges watched videotaped interactions of couples and rated their marital satisfaction based on certain behavioral cues. Results indicate: untrained judges were able to discriminate marital satisfaction/distress with significant validity; judges' ratings were correlated with couples' aversive behavior; and the actuarial…