Marital violence, marital distress and attributions

Because mpirical associations involving marital distress may be confounded by the presence of marital violence, 2 studies examined the interplay among marital distress, marital violence, and attributions for marital events. Study 1 showed that marital satisfaction was associated with causal and responsibility attributions independently ofviolence in a sample of 130 husbands. Study 2 demonstrated that the satisfaction-attribution association was independent ofviolence in a sample of 60 newlywed husbands and also showed that responsibility attributions predicted satisfaction 12 months later when violent husbands were excluded from the sample. These findings upport the focus on cognitive variables in recent models of marriage and marital violence. Increased awareness of marital violence has led to growing concern that phenomena thought to be associated with marital distress actually may be due to marital violence. The present studies therefore xamined the extent o whic