Personality and marital satisfaction: The role of similarity and psychological health

I examined how similarity between spouses' personalities and absolute levels of the personality traits among spouses were related to marital satisfaction in a sample of 76 heterosexual couples. Personality characteristics were measured with the Index of Self-esteem and the NEO-Five Factor Inventory, which assesses levels of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness. The Dyadic Adjustment Scale was used to measure marital satisfaction. Personality domains that are associated with psychological health including Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Self-esteem would correlate to marital satisfaction. Moreover, it was hypothesized that similarity of the spouses on the factors of Extraversion and Openness would be positively related to marital satisfaction. Similarity was measured by computing the absolute value of the difference between the spouses' scores on these personality factors. Findings indicated that several of the personality characteristics associated with overall psychological health were correlated with spouses' marital satisfaction. However, similarity of spouses' levels of extraversion and openness were not associated with either husbands' or wives' marital satisfaction.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Year

1994

Author dc:creator

• Garcia, Gretchen

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

https://oasis.library.unlv.edu/rtds/376

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:oasis.library.unlv.edu:rtds-1375