Gottman's three conflict management styles and marital quality
Date
1996
Authors
Wall, Bingham Page
Major Professor
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Cole, Charles
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Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine Gottman's (Gattman, 1994a; Gattman, 1994b) assertion that couples who have similar conflict management styles are happier than those who are of mixed types. Gottman has proposed that there are two other positive conflict management styles in addition to the validator. Thus, his theory suggests that couples who have the same conflict style (avoider-avoider, validator-validator, volatile-volatile) should have higher quality marriages than those who differ. If they do not, they will be out of balance with each, other making it harder to have internal frustrations worked out. If Gottman is correct, the implications call into question much of the literature on marriage quality over the last 60 years. In addition, clinicians will want to be able to understand these various conflict styles in order to not make hasty judgments about how couples are handling their difficulties. In support of Gattman, this study investigates whether couples (64 married and 1 cohabiting) with pure conflict management styles, assessed using Gattman' s Marital Conflict Styles Inventory (MCS), have higher quality of marriage scores on several marital quality (MQ) instruments than couples without pure conflict types (Gattman, 1994a, 1994b). In support of Lewis and Spanier (1979), this study also analyzes whether couples who both prefer validating conflict management styles score higher on MQ instruments than other conflict management types as assessed using the MCS. The MQ instruments used are the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) , which has four subscales (Spanier, 1976), the Marital Potential Inventory (MPI), which has fourteen item scales (Cole, 1992) and the Marital Commitment
Test (MCT), which has two subscales (Markman, Stanley & Blumberg, 1994). This is preceded by a review of the literature on marriage quality and conflict management styles. The data are analyzed using appropriate t-tests and correlations with SPSS for Windows. The results are presented and discussed and the implications for further research and the clinician are given. The study is critiqued and conclusions drawn.
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thesis