The Communicated Perspective-Taking Rating System and links to well-being in marital conflict

Research highlights the importance of perspective taking as a cognitive ability. A growing body of research also suggests that communicated perspective taking (CPT)—or how interactional partners acknowledge, attend to, and confirm each others' perspectives during interactions—enables collaborative sense-making of shared difficulties with significant links to individual and relational health. The purpose of the current study was to further operationalize the construct and to test the relation between CPT and well-being in married couples' (n = 80) conversations about conflict. The Communicated Perspective-Taking Rating System (CPTRS) was developed and tested as a reliable observational system. Findings indicate that husbands' CPT predicted wives' relational satisfaction, and wives' CPT predicted husbands' relational satisfaction. Implications and future applications of the CPTRS are discussed.