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Atribuirile Si Furia in Casnicie
Atribuirile Si Furia in Casnicie
Atribuirile Si Furia in Casnicie
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attributions predict behavior during problem-solving conversations and that husbands attributions are sometimes
unrelated to behavior. Other research on social support in
marriage has also found that wives are more responsive to
the immediate context than are husbands (Carels & Baucom, 1999; Cutrona & Suhr, 1994). In previous research
specifically distinguishing between event-dependent and
schematic cognition, Sanford (2003a) found that only
wives event-dependent (or proximal) expectancies predict
behavior. One explanation for this gender difference is that
wives engage in more bottom-up processing, whereas husbands engage in more top-down processing. That is, wives
may be more attentive to the subtle details of interpersonal
interaction (Acitelli, 1992), whereas husbands may be less
sensitive to changes in the relationship and respond on the
basis of their overall sentiment. If this is true, then the link
between event-dependent attributions and anger should be
stronger for wives than for husbands. In contrast, the link
between schematic attributions and anger should be stronger
for husbands than for wives. In addition, husbands anger
should be strongly related to their overall relationship sentiment, whereas this may not be true for wives.
Following an approach outlined by Sanford (2003a,
2003b), this study used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM)
to empirically distinguish between event-dependent and
schematic effects. To do this, it was necessary to assess both
event-dependent attributions and anger in response to real
relationship events on multiple occasions. This made it
possible to determine the extent to which attributions show
within-person fluctuations over time, and whether these
fluctuations correspond to within-person changes in anger.
In addition, this study investigated two schematic variables:
schematic attributions and relationship sentiment. Schematic attributions were assessed by asking participants to
rate the attributions they would make in response to a set of
hypothetical negative events. Relationship sentiment was
assessed via a self-report rating of marital quality. This
made it possible to determine the extent to which individual
differences in schematic attributions and in relationship
sentiment predict emotion after controlling for the eventdependent effects. Taken together, this study investigated
the following hypotheses:
1.
2.
3.
The effect for event-dependent attributions is expected to be stronger for wives than for husbands.
4.
5.
For husbands, overall relationship sentiment is expected to predict unique variance in anger after
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Method
Participants
Participants were 77 recently married couples. The majority of
participants were recruited through letters sent to all couples under
the age of 40 who had applied for marriage licenses in the previous
2 years in a mediumsmall Texas city. These letters described the
research study, invited couples to schedule two assessment sessions in a communication laboratory, and stated that couples would
receive $60.00 for their participation. The first 60 couples who
scheduled and kept both assessment appointments were included
in the sample. Previous research has found that couples recruited
in this way are often slightly better adjusted than couples recruited
through other methods, such as newspaper advertisements (Karney
et al., 1995). Thus, to reduce the overall risk of sampling bias in
the present study, an additional 17 couples were recruited through
a newspaper advertisement that read Focus on your marriage.
Contribute to our research program and earn $60.00. The advertisement also stated that couples had to be recently married to
participate. In the present study, there were no significant differences between couples recruited via the two different strategies on
any of the salient variables considered. All participating couples
had been married 3 years or less at the time of participation. The
participants average age was 26.48 years (SD 6.72), and they
had an average income of $40,387 (SD $21,606). Forty-nine
percent had no children, 23% had been previously married, and
58% lived together prior to marriage. The sample was 76% Caucasian, 16% Hispanic, 3% African American, and 5% other races.
Procedure
All participants took part in two assessment sessions that were
held at least 2 weeks apart. Each session lasted about 1 to 1.5 hr,
and both involved engaging in several videotaped communication
exercises and completing a number of questionnaires. During the
first assessment session, spouses were taken to separate rooms and
given a Specific Incident Form printed on carbon paper. This
form instructed participants to identify a specific incident that
illustrates an important unresolved issue in your relationship and
to answer the following questions: (a) When did the incident take
place? (b) Where did the incident take place? (c) What happened?
and (d) What is the issue? After both spouses had completed this
form, the experimenter set the husbands form aside for later and
separated the carbon copy from the wifes original form. While
couples remained seated in separate rooms, one copy of the wifes
incident form was given to the husband, and the other copy was
left in front of the wife. Participants were told that they would soon
have a conversation with their spouse about the wifes chosen
incident, and the husband was given time to read the wifes
completed incident form. Each spouse was then given a preconversation questionnaire regarding his or her thoughts and feelings
about the particular incident described on the wifes form. The
copies of the wifes incident form were left in front of both spouses
while they completed this questionnaire to ensure that there was no
confusion regarding the specific incident under consideration. After completing the questionnaire, couples were reunited and asked
to engage in a 10-min conversation about the wifes incident.
Couples were then taken back to separate rooms, and this time
each spouse was given a copy of the husbands specific incident
form. Couples then completed a second preconversation question-
Measures
Relationship sentiment. The Quality Marital Index (QMI;
Norton, 1983) was used to assess participants relationship sentiment, or satisfaction. The items on this questionnaire ask participants to evaluate the overall goodness of their relationship. For
example, participants rate the extent to which they agree with
statements such as Our marriage is strong. This questionnaire
was specifically designed to assess relationship quality without
asking respondents to describe particular events or behaviors that
might overlap with other aspects of relationship functioning, such
as agreement or communication. As such, the QMI provides a
good index of a persons global, subjective evaluation of his or her
relationship. The QMI contains six items, and in the present study
it produced alphas of .94 for wives and .93 for husbands. The
participants in this study were relatively nondistressed, with mean
QMI scores of 34.23 (SD 6.82) and 34.19 (SD 6.15) for wives
and husbands, respectively.
Schematic attributions. The Responsibility/Blame subscale of
Fincham and Bradburys (1992) Relationship Attribution Measure
(RAM) was used to measure a persons current, general tendency
to make blaming attributions for his or her partners behavior. This
questionnaire was chosen as a measure of schematic attributions
because it was specifically designed to eliminate situation-specific
responses by having participants rate hypothetical events and not
real events. The questionnaire includes four hypothetical events,
each representing a common form of negative partner behavior
(e.g., Your partner criticizes something you say). For each
hypothetical event, participants rate on a 6-point scale the extent to
which they agree with three different attributions. In the present
study, this 12-item scale produced alphas of .87 for wives and .88
for husbands.
Preconversation questionnaire. A separate preconversation
questionnaire was completed for each of the four incidents spouses
identified on the specific incident forms. Spouses were instructed
to look at the specific incident form under consideration and
answer questions in response to the particular incident identified
on that form. To assess event-dependent attributions, spouses were
instructed to look at the specific incident form and think about
what your partner did during the specific incident described.
Participants then indicated their agreement with six different attributions drawn from Fincham and Bradburys (1992) RAM: My
partner did this on purpose rather than unintentionally, My
partners behavior was motivated by selfish rather than unselfish
concerns, My partner deserves to be blamed for this, My
partners behavior is caused by something about him/her, The
Results
Correlations were computed between each of the eight
event-dependent variables (four assessments of attribution
and four assessments of anger). In addition, correlations
were computed between the schematic variables (schematic
attributions and relationship quality) and the eventdependent variables. These correlations are reported in Table 1 for wives and Table 2 for husbands. As would be
expected, event-dependent attributions were moderately
correlated with schematic attributions, although the correlations were not so high as to suggest that these variables are
redundant. For wives, each event-dependent attribution correlated with the corresponding event-dependent anger rating, and most of the correlations between event-dependent
attributions and relationship quality were significant. Husbands event-dependent attributions produced fewer signif-
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Table 1
Correlations Between Event-Dependent and Schematic Variables for Wives
Event-dependent attributions
Variable
Time 1
Event-dependent attributions
Time 1
Time 2
Time 3
Time 4
Event-dependent anger
Time 1
Time 2
Time 3
Time 4
Schematic variables
Relationship sentiment
Attributions
* p .05.
** p .01.
.57***
.49***
.52***
Time 2
Time 3
.35**
.29**
.44***
.23*
.14
.02
.12
.17
.38***
.07
.00
.00
.11
.35**
.18
.28*
.58***
.13
.42***
.27*
.40***
*** p .001.
Event-dependent anger
Time 4
Time 1
Time 2
Time 3
Time 4
.25*
.33**
.11
.50***
.37***
.50***
.45***
.15
.36***
.10
.21
.25*
.21
.14
.25*
.41***
.21
.17
.30**
.20
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Table 2
Correlations Between Event-Dependent and Schematic Variables for Husbands
Event-dependent attributions
Variable
Time 1
Event-dependent attributions
Time 1
Time 2
Time 3
Time 4
Event-dependent anger
Time 1
Time 2
Time 3
Time 4
Schematic variables
Relationship sentiment
Attributions
* p .05.
** p .01.
Time 2
Time 3
Event-dependent anger
Time 4
.48***
.40***
.31**
.30**
.22
.40***
.30**
.21
.17
.15
.01
.19
.10
.05
.25*
.28*
.40***
.25*
.12
.05
.21
.17
.29**
.35**
.00
.33**
.11
.64***
Time 1
.62***
.45***
.33**
.11
.48***
.52***
.39***
Time 2
.35**
.25*
.41***
.38***
Time 3
Time 4
.50***
.37***
.36***
.36***
.31**
*** p .001.
suggests that approximately half of the variance in attributions reflected changes occurring within persons and half of
the variance reflected individual differences between people. The intraclass correlations for anger were .29 for wives
and .41 for husbands. This suggests that there was somewhat less consistency in anger across assessments, with
more than half of the variance representing within-person
change.
HLM (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992) was used to examine
the relationship between attributions and anger across two
levels of analysis: the event-dependent level and the schematic level. This data analysis procedure is best described as
a process that begins by creating a separate regression
equation for each individual couple in the sample. Following the multivariate hierarchical model described by Raudenbush, Brennan, and Barnett (1995), this study used a
single equation to estimate a separate intercept and slope for
the wife and husband of each couple. In the present study,
this equation took the following form:
y ct b w0 wife bh0 husband bw1 wife attributionct
bh1 husband attributionct ect .
For each couple, anger is assessed at 8 times (4 times for
each spouse), and yct is the anger score for couple c at
assessment t (t 1, . . . , 8). For the wife, the variable
labeled wife is a dummy variable equal to 1, and the
variable labeled wife attribution is the wifes attribution z
score at assessment point t. For the husband, both of these
variables are set to equal zero, and they drop out of the
equation when predicting outcomes for the wife. This means
that bw0 is the intercept for the wife, and bw1 is the slope for
the wife. Similarly for the husband, the variable labeled
husband is a dummy variable equal to 1 (and set to zero
for the wife), and the variable labeled husband attribution
is the husbands attribution z score at assessment point t (set
to equal zero for the wife). Thus, bh0 is the intercept for the
husband, and bh1 is the slope for the husband. Taken together, it is possible to estimate four parameters for each
couple in the sample: the wifes intercept and slope and the
husbands intercept and slope. The slope indicates the extent
to which within-person fluctuations in event-dependent attributions predict corresponding within-person changes in
emotion. The intercept gives a persons expected emotion,
holding event-dependent attributions constant. Notably,
event-dependent attributions scores were turned into z
scores in this study so that the intercept gives a persons
expected emotion when his or her event-dependent attribution is equal to the sample average attribution.
After the four parameter estimates were computed for
each couple in the sample (two intercepts and two slopes),
these parameters were then used as outcome variables at the
second level of analysis. The following second-level equations were used to estimate each of the first-level parameters:
b w0c w00 w01 wife attributionc uw0c
b h0c h00 h01 husband attributionc uh0c
b w1c w10
b h1c h10,
where w00 is the average expected anger for wives when all
attributions are held constant; h00 is the average expected
anger for husbands when all attributions are held constant;
w01 is the slope indicating the extent to which wives
schematic attributions predict their expected anger scores
after controlling for event-dependent attributions; h01 is the
slope indicating the extent to which husbands schematic
attributions predict their expected anger scores after controlling for event-dependent attributions; w10 is the average
within-person slope for event-dependent attributions for all
wives; and h10 is the average within-person slope for
event-dependent attributions for all husbands.
Taken together, these equations provide parameters indicating (a) the expected anger for wives and husbands after
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Discussion
This study builds on previous research indicating that
attributions are correlated with anger in marriage (Fincham
et al., 1987; Fincham & Bradbury, 1992; Senchak &
Leonard, 1993), and it distinguished between two types of
attribution: event dependent and schematic (Bugental &
Johnston, 2000). The results indicate that the processes that
link attributions and anger are not the same for husbands
and wives. Event-dependent attributions were the best predictor of wives anger, whereas schematic attributions were
the best predictor of husbands anger. This means that for
wives, changes and fluctuations in attributions from one
context to the next are strongly predictive of corresponding
changes in emotion. Moreover, variables that are distal to
the current context, such as relationship sentiment and schematic attributions, appear to have no additional influence on
wives emotion after controlling for their event-dependent
appraisals. In contrast, husbands emotion was closely related to schematic-level variables and especially to overall
sentiment in the relationship. For husbands, changes or
fluctuations in attributions were only weakly related to
changes in emotion. Thus, wives anger appears to be most
Table 3
Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) Results Using Event-Dependent and Schematic
Variables to Predict Anger
HLM coefficients
Equation
Wives
First equation
Expected anger Z score (intercept)
Schematic attributions (slope)
Event-dependent attributions (slope)
Second equation
Expected anger Z score (intercept)
Schematic attributions (slope)
Relationship sentiment (slope)
Event-dependent attributions (slope)
* p .05.
** p .01.
*** p .001.
.20**
.04
.43***
.20**
.04
.01
.43***
Husbands
.18*
.25**
.19**
15.45***
3.75*
8.00**
.19**
.17*
.33***
.17**
19.19***
1.44
11.19**
9.66**
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closely connected to event-dependent appraisals of the current context, whereas husbands anger appears to be most
closely connected with schematic appraisals of the overall
relationship.
The distinction between event-dependent and schematic
cognition is similar to distinctions made by other researchers from varying lines of inquiry using somewhat different
terminology. For example, Sanford (2003a, 2003b) distinguishes between proximal and distal cognition, Solomon
(2001) distinguishes between phasic and tonic attributions,
and Smith and Kirby (2001) distinguish between cognition
based on reasoning and that based on associative processing. Although researchers have used differing terminology
to describe the two types of cognition, there are three
common assumptions suggested by many researchers in this
area.
The first common assumption is that there is an important
distinction between attributions made in response to a specific event and attributions based on memories or on schemata for how things typically are in the relationship. The
correlation results in the present study indicate that these
two types of attribution are moderately correlated. This
makes assessment of attributions difficult, because the two
types of attribution can be easily confounded. That is, any
measure of event-dependent attributions is likely to be influenced, to a degree, by schematic attributions. Conversely,
a measure of schematic attributions may reflect, to an extent, a simple cumulative sum of event-dependent attributions. Consequently, if attributions are assessed for only a
single occasion, it is impossible to determine what percentage of the variance actually represents an event-dependent
appraisal and what percentage represents a schematic appraisal. However, the present study demonstrates a method
for distinguishing between these two types of attribution.
This requires assessing both types of attribution and using
HLM to identify the unique effects associated with each
type. The results based on this procedure confirm the validity of both event-dependent and schematic attributions.
Specifically, the results indicate that the function and correlates of event-dependent attributions are not the same as
the function and correlates of schematic attributions.
A second common assumption suggested by researchers
is that event-dependent cognition will change from one
context to the next, whereas schematic cognition is a relatively stable characteristic of the person. In other words,
event-dependent attributions pertain to within-person
change, whereas schematic attributions pertain to individual
differences. Results from the present study suggest that
attributions include a degree of both stability and withinperson change. For both wives and husbands, approximately
50% of the variance in event-dependent attributions represented individual differences between people, and approximately 50% of the variance represented changes occurring
within people. Given the strong reliability estimates for the
attribution questionnaire, most of this variance appears to be
true variance. This means that the weak effect for husbands
event-dependent attributions was not the result of a lack of
reliable event-dependent variance. Husbands did change
their attributions across situations, but these changes were
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butions. The close connection between event-dependent attributions and emotion for wives could indicate that wives
attributions reflect accurate appraisals of the current context
(Bradbury et al., 1996). If it turns out that wives attributions are indeed generally accurate, then the best way to
change an event-dependent attribution would be to change
the context. This suggests that a particularly effective intervention might be to teach husbands to behave differently
and teach wives to make positive attributions for these
changes. The results of the present study indicate that a
change in a wifes attributions would likely correspond to a
change in her emotion. These implications for couples therapy remain relatively speculative at this point, in part because this study used a relatively nondistressed sample and
the findings may not generalize to a clinical setting. The
results of the present study are important in that they demonstrate a method for distinguishing between eventdependent and schematic attributions, show how these types
of attributions function differently in wives and husbands,
and provide direction for future research regarding clinical
applications.
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