Carol C. Weisfeld

Sources of Marital Conflict in Five Cultures

This analysis of previously collected data examined four fitness-relevant issues for their possible role in marital conflict. These were sex, finances, division of labor, and raising children, selected in light of their pertinence to sex differences in reproductive strategies. Over 2,000 couples in five diverse cultures were studied. Marital conflict was assessed by the Problems with Partner scale, which was previously shown to demonstrate measurement invariance across cultures and genders. All four issues were significantly related to perceived marital problems in almost all cases. Thus, conflict tended to arise around issues relevant to reproductive strategies. A few cultural idiosyncrasies emerged and are discussed. In all cultures, wives reported more problems than husbands. Another important issue was kindness. The results suggest that a key factor in marital success or failure may be kindness necessary to sustain this prolonged and intimate relationship of cooperation for raising ones offspring.

Marital satisfaction in four cultures as a function of homogamy, male dominance and female attractiveness

Mate choice and mate retention may both depend in part on the principle of homogamy, or positive assortative mating. In humans, the more similar couples are, the happier and more stable their relationships are. However, the practice of homogamy in mate selection must be balanced against the need to select qualities in a mate that are slightly different from ones own, and evolutionary theory has suggested that male dominance and female attractiveness are two particularly adaptive qualities that are sought in a mate. The present study investigated the relationship between marital satisfaction and homogamy in American, British, Chinese and Turkish couples. In addition, the present research assessed the evolutionary hypothesis that spousal ascendancies on dominance and attractiveness would relate to marital satisfaction. Cross-culturally, romantic love for ones spouse increased as a function of both homogamy and some evolutionarily predicted divergences on both dominance and attractiveness. However, marital ...

Marital Satisfaction Across Three Cultures: Does the Number of Children Have an Impact After Accounting for Other Marital Demographics?:

U.S. studies indicate that children tend to stabilize marriage but, paradoxically, to reduce marital satisfaction. To explore whether this finding exists in a similar fashion in other cultures, the authors studied the impact of number of children on spousal love in the United States, United Kingdom, and Turkey, while accounting for other marital demographics (such as duration of marriage and the ages of wives and husbands). The number of children predicted diminished marital satisfaction in couples from all three cultures, although this effect arguably was not present in Turkish wives. In addition, marital satisfaction in couples from all three cultures was generally negatively predicted by the duration of marriage. Marital satisfaction was generally unrelated to wife’s age. The effect of husband’s age was important to marital satisfaction in couples from all cultures, although the nature of this effect diverged in relating positively to marital satisfaction for British and American couples but negatively for Turkish couples and especially Turkish wives. The authors identify several potentially important implications of these results.

Do women seek humorousness in men because it signals intelligence? A cross-cultural test

Abstract Miller has suggested that people seek humorousness in a mate because humor connotes intelligence, which would be valuable in a spouse. Since males tend to be the competing sex, men have been more strongly selected to be humorous. To test this notion, we explored the role of humor in marriage cross-culturally, in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Turkey, and Russia. In the first four societies, husbands were perceived to make wives laugh more than the reverse, but wives were funnier in Russia. Spousal humorousness was associated with marital satisfaction in all cultures, especially the wifes satisfaction. Spousal humorousness was less consistently related to spousal intelligence than to some alternative possibilities: spousal kindness, dependability, and understanding. Furthermore, the relationship between these four variables and marital satisfaction was mediated by spousal humorousness. Humor is gratifying in other social contexts as well. Humorists may gain social credit by providing amusement, and may also use humor to gauge anothers mood and to engender liking, perhaps especially in courtship and marriage. Spouses may also take humorousness as a sign of motivation to be amusing, kind, understanding, dependable — as a sign of commitment.

Machismo and Marital Satisfaction in Mexican American Couples

Traditional machismo in Mexican American culture has been considered detrimental to marital satisfaction (MS). Contrary to this notion, contemporary views of machismo suggest that masculinity in Mexican American couples is contextual and fluid along a continuum of positive and negative dimensions. In this study, the dyadic effects of positive and negative machismo on MS in Mexican American couples were explored using actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) analyses. A sample of 112 Mexican American couples completed bilingual self-report questionnaires assessing endorsement of machismo beliefs and MS. Adjustments were made for income, acculturation, and number of children. Results showed an actor effect of overall machismo on MS for husbands among low-acculturated but not high-acculturated couples. Furthermore, we found that wives’ endorsement of positive machismo beliefs was associated with higher levels of their own MS, whereas moderate levels of positive machismo were associated with higher levels of MS for husbands. In contrast, wives’ endorsement of negative machismo was associated with lower levels of their husbands’ MS (a partner effect). Additional analyses revealed that among low-acculturated couples, husbands’ positive machismo was positively associated with their own MS, but not among high-acculturated couples. Among wives, we found the opposite pattern: wives in low-acculturated couples showed no association between positive machismo and MS, but among high-acculturated couples, wives’ endorsement of positive machismo was positively associated with their own MS. These findings call for a more nuanced understanding of positive and negative machismo and challenge stereotypical notions of machismo still prevalent in popular culture and research as intrinsically pathological.

When I look into your eyes

Gender differences in communication styles have been observed in subjects of all ages, in many cultures. This study was designed to see whether such gender differences persist in happily married couples. Observers coded the nonverbal behaviors of 40 happily married US couples who were videotaped discussing commitment in marriage. Although these couples showed no significant sex differences in marital satisfaction (as measured by the MARQ of Russell and Wells) or in verbal statements regarding commitment, robust sex differences in the following nonverbal behaviors emerged: smiling, laughing, and average length of look at spouse (t-test for matched pairs, p <0.01). Wives looked significantly longer, as if listening attentively; husbands used shorter glances at wives, suggesting a monitoring function. Results were consistent across age and length of marriage. Experimenter effects were seen, in that husbands were more likely to speak first with a male experimenter, and discussions went on longer with a female...

WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY, THE SPOUSE WILL PLAY: A CROSS-CULTURAL EXAMINATION OF MATE GUARDING IN MARRIED COUPLES

In this post hoc analysis of mate retention behavior, over 3000 married couples from five cultures completed the Marriage and Relationship Questionnaire (MARQ). The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) was used to test relationships for selected variables. For all countries and both sexes, the spouse being attracted to other people was linked to worry about spousal infidelity. For all cases except the Russians, being attracted to one’s spouse was related to less worry by the spouse about infidelity. In all cases, one’s being attractive was associated with spousal feelings of possessiveness. Having a spouse who went out without them was related to infidelity worries for wives in all groups and husbands in three groups. Feelings of possessiveness were related to wanting to touch the spouse in most groups, and husbands reported more such desire in all groups. Husbands who sought sex outside of marriage worried about reciprocal spousal infidelity in all cultures, as did wives in most cultures. Overall, ...

Is Play an Emotion? Some Ethological Observations

This paper begins with a list of commonly recognized forms of play and a discussion of definitions of play. This is followed by an overview of the ontogeny, phylogeny, mechanisms, and possible functions of human play. Next the question of whether or not play should be regarded as a separate emotion from interest is addressed. Play resembles the emotion of interest (or curiosity) in its affects and cognitive elicitors. Play differs from interest in exhibiting somewhat distinctive behavioral, visceral, and expressive emotional properties. This evidence, together with phylogenetic information, suggests that interest, exploration, and play constitute the same basic emotion, with exploration being an evolutionary offshoot of interest and play an offshoot of exploration.