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Because religion and/or spirituality is integral to the lives of a majority of the world population, we conducted 3 studies on the role of prayer in romantic relationships. Study 1 (N = 375) showed that prayer for the partner predicted lower levels of extradyadic romantic behavior over a 6-week period, over and beyond relationship satisfaction, and initial levels of extradyadic romantic behavior. In Study 2 (N = 83), we used an experimental design to show that participants assigned to pray for each day for 4 weeks engaged in lower levels of extradyadic romantic behavior during that time, compared with those who engaged in daily positive thoughts about the partner or a neutral activity. Perception of the relationship as sacred mediated the relation between experimentally manipulated prayer and later infidelity. Study 3 (N = 23) showed that objective observers rated participants who had been praying for their partner for 4 weeks as more committed to their romantic relationship than control participants. The implications of these results are then discussed. Keywords: romantic relationships, prayer, infidelity DOI: 10.1037/a0019628

Testing the idea that the process of forgiveness is intrinsically different across diverse relationships, this study examined the role of forgiveness in different family relationships. In 2 laboratory sessions 1 year apart, 114 families (each including 2 parents and 1 child) completed a new measure of family forgiveness and many individual-level, relationship-level, and family-level variables that have been previously linked with forgiveness. After validating the measure of family forgiveness in cross-sectional analyses, investigators performed longitudinal analyses to examine the role of forgiveness in each family relationship over the 1-year interval. Results indicated many important positive consequences of forgiveness on individual traits, aspects of each family relationship, and general family environment. However, there were also important asymmetries in associates of forgiveness across parent-child and parent-parent relationships, demonstrating the relationship-bound nature of forgiveness. Keywords: forgiveness, family, self-persuasion, relationships

Social relations analyses examined the relative importance of forgivingness (disposition to forgive others), forgivability (tendency to obtain forgiveness from others), and relationship effects in determining family members' transgression-related interpersonal motivations (TRIMs) and their perceptions of others' TRIMs toward them (PTRIMs). In 2 studies, the individual and dyadic predictors of these components and their relative importance differed by family role (father, mother, or early adolescent child). Dispositional tendencies accounted for the most variance in father and child forgiveness, whereas mothers' TRIMs and PTRIMs were more strongly determined by relationship and partner effects. Personality correlates of forgivingness and forgivability were moderated by family role. The findings point to the need to embed the study of forgiveness in more complex psychosocial contexts. The theoretical, methodological, and applied implications of this conclusion are discussed. Keywords: forgiveness, family roles, social relations model

The investigators proposed that transgression-related interpersonal motivations result from 3 psychological parameters: forbearance (abstinence from avoidance and revenge motivations, and maintenance of benevolence), trend forgiveness (reductions in avoidance and revenge, and increases in benevolence), and temporary forgiveness (transient reductions in avoidance and revenge, and transient increases in benevolence). In 2 studies, the investigators examined this 3-parameter model. Initial ratings of transgression severity and empathy were directly related to forbearance but not trend forgiveness. Initial responsibility attributions were inversely related to forbearance but directly related to trend forgiveness. When people experienced high empathy and low responsibility attributions, they also tended to experience temporary forgiveness. The distinctiveness of each of these 3 parameters underscores the importance of studying forgiveness temporally.

The effect of causal attribution on marital conflict tended to be mediated through attributions of responsibility for most married partners with children. Cross-spouse effects provided a more accurate model than one with no cross-spouse effects.

The improvement made by L.A. Kurdek on the data analysis produced by Frank D. Fincham and colleagues cannot be seen as accounting for the discrepant longitudinal or concurrent links between depression and marital quality. When all disturbance terms were permitted to correlate freely across spouses, there were signs of a gender difference in Fincham's data but no indication of any cross-lagged effects in the Kurdek data. It has been possible to identify a number of factors that may affect the ability to detect any potential causal link between marital distress and depression.

In a series of four studies, the self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model is used to predict peoples' self-reported affective responses to doing better or worse than their partners. Both self-protective reactions to comparison (i.e., those predicted by the original SEM model) and empathic reactions to the partner's response (i.e., those predicted by the extended SEM model) were obtained. In addition, as predicted on the basis of both models, comparisons with romantic partners resulted in a different pattern of self-reported affect than did comparisons with strangers. Unexpectedly, it appeared that empathic effects were minimal or absent among dating partners when comparisons were in areas of high self-relevance.

Assessing positive marital quality (PMQ) and negative marital quality (NMQ) independently can boost understanding of marriage compared with using traditional measures of marital quality. Associated PMQ and NMQ dimensions were found to correlate with behaviour and attributions in a theoretically significant way. For both husbands and wives, the extent of the correlations between PMQ and NMQ scores was similar to those between positive and negative dimensions of attitudes established in social psychological research.

Research indicates that models of marital violence and marriage should concentrate on cognitive variables. The interplay between attributions for marital events, marital violence and marital distress were analysed in two studies, with marital violence potentially confounding empirical associations in marital distress. One study showed the violence was not considered part of the satisfaction-attribution association among newlywed husbands, while the other study demonstrated responsibility and causal attributions were associated with marital satisfaction.

In these two studies, the authors used children's perceptions of family relationships to examine simultaneously direct and indirect links between marital conflict and child adjustment. With data pertaining to 146 sixth and seventh graders, Study I supported direct and indirect effects of perceptions of marital conflict on internalizing behaviors, and indirect effects for externalizing behaviors. In Study 2, data analyzed from 451 families showed indirect effects of marital conflict and parent-to-child hostility, through adolescent perceptions of such behavior, on both current distress and distress 12 months later in 3 of 4 models estimated. Direct and indirect effects were found for boys' concurrent internalizing behavior. Implications and limitations of both studies are discussed to address the need for a more sophisticated theoretical approach to examine why an association exists between marital conflict and child adjustment.

Spouses' conflict promoting attributions directly relate to parenting practices, through their effects on the marital context. Fathers tend to show stronger effects of marital attributions and marital context on positive and negative parenting behavior than mothers. Marital attributions affect only negative parenting in mothers, although marital context has an indirect effect on both positive and negative parenting. Children's attributions for negative parental behavior are related to conflict-promoting marital attributions, and consequent ineffective parent-child communication.

The process of maintaining marital relationships follows the principles of a performance ecology in which, performance niches of partners serve as the context for understanding relationship processes. The self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model can effectively demonstrate the structure of the performance ecology. A series of studies show that experimental manipulations of SEM processes affect the behavior of married couples. Spouses structure their joint activities in such a way so as to minimize negative social comparison.

The study examined whether spouses' attributions for partner behavior are related to their own behavior by assessing their attributions and observing the problem-solving discussions of couples in which (a) neither spouse was depressed or maritally distressed, (b) the wife was depressed and both spouses were maritally distressed, and (c) the wife was not depressed and both spouses were maritally distressed. To the extent they made maladaptive attributions, wives displayed less positive behavior and more negative behavior. Husbands' attributions and behavior were unrelated, and associations between attributions and behavior were not moderated by marital distress and depression. These results highlight the need to clarify how partner behavior contributes to the attributions spouses make and to reexamine interventions designed to modify attributions in marital therapy.

An exploratory study examined the origins of children's motivational patterns in the family by observing 3rd-grade children (10 helpless and 11 mastery-oriented) and their mothers performing a series of solvable and insolvable problem-solving tasks. Mothers of mastery children appeared to show sensitivity and responsiveness to their children's ability perceptions and requests for help. They also appeared to support mastery behaviors in their children by increasing task-focused teaching behaviors and maintaining high-positive affect during the insolvable puzzles. Furthermore, in the face of failures, they retrained their children's low-ability attributions and performance-goal statements, while promoting mastery or task-focused behaviors. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that mothers of mastery children may socialize their children's achievement motivation. However, because of the small sample size and other limitations, the results should be interpreted with caution. Several directions are outlined for future research on the familial origins of helpless and mastery patterns in children.

Empirical investigations have not fully addressed the consistency in attribution responses or attributional style in spite of their theoretical importance. A total of 150 couples were sampled to determine if attribution responses within attribution dimensions and response patterns across attribution dimensions showed consistency in their relationships with adaptational results. The results' implications on the ideal level of attributional style conceptualization are presented.

A study of marital satisfaction among 92 couples suggests the influence of prior expectations regarding attitudes of the spouse on the extent of satisfaction. The strength of a marriage can be assessed in terms of accessibility, which is the extent of agreement between the perceived and actual behavior of the spouse.

Research on the social cognitive processes involved in marriages with the aid of chronometric analyses indicates that the extent of marital distress depends on the responses of spouses to each other. The reconceptualization of sentiment override proves that only most accessible partners show this trait.

Spouses' masculinity and femininity were examined in relation to longitudinal change in marital satisfaction and behavior displayed in a problem-solving discussion. Results indicated, first, that wives' satisfaction declined to the extent that their husband endorsed fewer desirable masculine traits (Study 1) and more undesirable masculine traits (Study 2). Second, masculinity and femininity covaried with problem-solving behavior, particularly for behavioral sequences involving husbands' responses to wives' negative behavior. Finally, the relation between husbands' masculinity and change in wives' satisfaction was not mediated by husbands' behavior; instead, sex role and behavioral variables made independent contributions to change in wives' satisfaction. These results are important because they highlight the value of examining intraindividual and interpersonal variables when determining how marriages improve and deteriorate.

Longitudinal research on the link between marital and child problems reveals that parental conflict influences a child's adjustment problems and the appraisal of marital conflicts determines the degree of maladjustment. Parental discipline practices, parent-child aggression and the nature of parent-child relationships affect children's views on martial conflicts. Further research is essential for comparing the causal models and analyzing the relation between variables to understand the influence of marital conflict on children's behavioral problems.

First generation studies on the relation between marital discord and child adjustment and second generation studies explaining this relation show that marital discord and interparental conflicts create behavioral and adjustment problems in children. The second generation research that includes the causal mechanisms in marital discord and contextual factors is more advanced than the first as it discusses major issues relevant to marital discord and child adjustment.

Structural equation modeling with latent variables was used to test whether negative affectivity, or the cross-situational tendency to experience and express negative thoughts and feelings, correlates with spouses' attributions for relationship events and accounts for the association between attributions and satisfaction. Eighty married couples completed measures of marital satisfaction, attributions, and negative affectivity. Spouses high in negative affectivity tended to make maladaptive attributions, but spouses' attributions were unrelated to the level of negative affectivity reported by the partner. Attributions and marital satisfaction remained associated among husbands and wives after controlling for negative affectivity. These findings clarify the link between attributions and marital satisfaction and raise the possibility that negative affectivity contributes to the attributions that spouses make for negative events in marriage.

This study examined the longitudinal relation between causal attributions and marital satisfaction and tested rival hypotheses that might account for any longitudinal association found between these variables. Data on attributions for negative partner behaviors, marital satisfaction, depression, and self-esteem were provided by 130 couples at 2 points separated by 12 months. To the extent that spouses made nonbenign attributions for negative partner behavior, their marital satisfaction was lower a year later. This finding was not due to depression, self-esteem, or initial level of marital satisfaction, and also emerged when persons reporting chronic individual or marital disorder were removed. Results support a possible causal relation between attributions and marital satisfaction.

Fauber and Long's (1991) overview of research on family therapy with children is a valuable integration of the literatures on the family correlates of and treatments for childhood disorders. Several concerns apply to some of the inferences they draw from risk research, however. Their assertion that various sources of family distress have effects that are mediated primarily through parenting is questionable, as is their suggestion that parenting therefore is the appropriate focus of family treatment. The conceptual issues of reductionism, linearity, holism, and change in defining causality are discussed in questioning these conclusions about etiology and treatment. Other empirical and methodological issues are raised briefly, particularly as they relate to statistical models of direct and indirect influences and to the body of correlational and analogue research on how parental conflict influences children., The assertion that various sources of family stress have effects that are mediated mainly through parenting is specifically regarded as questionable. The conclusion that parenting therefore is the appropriate focus of family treatment is held invalid. The conceptual issues of reductionism, linearity, holism and change in defining causality are tackled in the process of questioning these conclusions about etiology and treatment.

To examine whether spouses' attributions for events in their marriage are related to their behavior in interaction, spouses were asked to report their marital quality, to make attributions for marital difficulties, and to engage in problem-solving discussions. Study 1 demonstrated that spouses' maladaptive attributions were related to less effective problem-solving behaviors, particularly among wives. Study 2 showed that spouses' maladaptive attributions were related to higher rates of negative behavior and, for wives, to increased tendencies to reciprocate negative partner behavior. In both studies attributions and behavior tended to be more strongly related for distressed than nondistressed wives. These results support social-psychological models that posit that attributions are related to behavior and models of marriage and close relationships that assume that maladaptive attributions contribute to conflict behavior and relationship dysfunction.

A number of child-, family-, and system-focused interventions have been designed to prevent or reduced the negative effects of divorce on children. This article critically evaluates these intervention efforts by examining (a) their relation to basic research on the processes proposed to mediate children's postdivorce adjustment and (b) evaluation studies assessing the effectiveness of various programs. Although interventions address some of the factors proposed to mediate children's adaptation to divorce, the interplay between interventions and basic research on children's postdivorce adaptation is limited. Moreover, some intervention efforts appear to be beneficial, but most lack empirical documentation of their efficacy. This analysis leads to several recommendations for basic and applied research and for improving the response of the mental health field to the problems experienced by many children from divorcing families.

A brief, simple measure of different types of attributions for partner behavior was examined in 3 studies of married couples. Reliability was established by high internal consistency and test-retest correlations. Causal and responsibility attribution scores correlated with marital satisfaction, att for marital difficulties, and attributions for actual partner behaviors generated by spouses. Responsibility attributions were related to (a) reported anger in response to stimulus behaviors use in the measure and (b) the amount of anger displayed by wives during a problem-solving interaction with their partner. The extent to which husbands and wives whined during their discussion also correlated with their responsibility attributions. The results address several problems with existin assessments, and their implications for the measurement of attributions in marriage are discussed.

A study was conducted to examine the wives of men entering alcoholism treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Findings suggest that wives of alcoholic men are placed at risk for indirect exposure to STIs of their sexual risk behaviors.

The article examines the association of forgiveness and conflict resolution in marriage. The relationship is found longitudinally in case of wives.

The latent structure of the construct of marital adjustment using taxometric methods is investigated using taxometric methods. Marital discord can be viewed as a quantitatively distinct state as experienced by approximately 20% of the couples and the implications for marital assessment are outlined.

Attitudes of substance-abusing fathers and mothers entering outpatient treatment toward allowing their custodial children to participate in individual- or family-based interventions were examined. Parental reluctance to allow their children to participate in the treatment is a significant barrier in efforts to intervene with these at-risk children.

The adjustment of children living in families with drug-abusing fathers with that of children with fathers who abused alcohol and children with non-substance-abusing fathers is compared. The study shows that children with drug-abusing fathers experienced more internalizing and externalizing symptoms than children with alcoholic or non-substance-abusing fathers.

The two studies were conducted that examined whether forgiveness in married couples is associated with better conflict resolution. The findings are discussed in terms of the importance of forgiveness for marital conflict and its implications for spouse goals, and future research directions on forgiveness are outlined.

The link between attributions and marital satisfaction in recently wed spouses was examined.

A study was conducted to evaluate children's attributions in parent-child associations and to analyze the correlation between relationship positivity and behavior showed toward parents. The Children's Relationship Attribution Measure was utilized to determine children's attributions for parental behavior. Results revealed the importance of children's views of family processes. Findings also correlated children's attributions for parent behavior to the positivity of the relationship between parent and child.