Marital Problem Solving Interaction and Satisfaction: A Microanalytic Study

Abstract

This study analyzed the behaviors during married couples’ problem solving interactions with Markov analysis and test the predictable effect of these behaviors on marital satisfaction. The study involved 25 married couples. The findings show that gender had a significant effect on the behaviors during the interaction. Positive behaviors such as positive solution and acceptance facilitated the couples’ understanding each other, listening made the experienced problems clearer, criticizing such as making excuses caused a reaction that was ineffective; negative behaviors predicted marital satisfaction significantly.

Keywords:

• Problem solving interaction
• marital satisfaction
• observational coding system
• markov chain analysis

Declarations

This article was partially adopted from the first author’s PhD dissertation.