New research provides surprising insights into the relationship between personality traits, marital satisfaction, and mental health. Contrary to popular expectations, this study found that although personality predicted marital satisfaction, marital satisfaction itself did not directly predict mental health problems. The survey results are personality journal.
The motivation behind the research
Past research has shown strong associations between personality traits and mental health disorders, suggesting that aspects of an individual's personality may predispose them to psychological problems. A new study aims to investigate this further, focusing in particular on how the quality of the marital relationship, which is often influenced by personality, may play a role in the development of mental health problems. I'm guessing.
“The relationships we choose to have compared to the family-like relationships we are born with are very interesting to me,” said study author and doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Purdue University. explained Samantha Dassino.
“This is especially true for romantic partners, who often spend much of their adult lives together. This paper is a natural extension of this interest: It investigates how traits (such as personality) influence happiness in romantic relationships and, in turn, the likelihood of experiencing mental health symptoms.”
How to conduct research
The study involved 199 newlyweds (99 men and 100 women) living in a Midwestern college town. These couples within 12 months of marriage participated in a series of data collection at three different time points: at the start, after 6 months, and after 1 year.
They were assessed using two main tools: the Schedule of Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality 2 (SNAP-2) and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS). The SNAP-2 questionnaire assessed participants' personality across three broad dimensions: positive temperament, negative temperament, and disinhibition. The DAS, on the other hand, measured the quality of the marital relationship through various aspects, such as mutual activities and overall happiness.
Additionally, this study utilized the Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Symptoms (IDAS) and the Externalizing Scale (ES-100) to measure internalizing and externalizing symptoms of psychopathology, respectively. These tools helped assess the presence of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse behaviors.
The influence of personality on marital satisfaction
An important finding of this study was that personality traits significantly influence the quality of marital relationships. Researchers found that positive temperament, including traits such as optimism and sociability, was positively correlated with higher marital satisfaction. This suggests that people with more positive mindsets and attractive social behaviors tend to have happier marriages.
Conversely, negative temperament, characterized by traits such as moodiness and emotional instability, predicted lower marital satisfaction. This suggests that people who tend to have a pessimistic view of life and experience emotional ups and downs may have more trouble in their relationships.
Interestingly, the study also found that disinhibition, a trait associated with impulsivity and lack of self-control, was associated with increased marital satisfaction. This was somewhat unexpected, as disinhibition is generally thought to be detrimental to relationships. This study suggests that in the context of these newlywed couples, certain aspects of disinhibition may contribute positively to relationship dynamics, perhaps by promoting spontaneity and openness.
Unexpected lack of mediation
But one of the study's most surprising findings was that there was no direct link between marital satisfaction and mental health problems. Contrary to expectations, marital quality did not significantly predict mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, or substance use.
Furthermore, there was no evidence of a mediated relationship between marital satisfaction and mental health problems. Mediation in psychological research is a process in which a variable (in this case marital satisfaction) is expected to act as a link or “mediator” between an independent variable (personality trait) and a dependent variable (mental health problem). refers to .
“In this study, we looked at the path from personality to relationship satisfaction to symptoms of mental health disorders,” Dassineau told SciPost. “So, what we wanted to know is, does personality influence the experience of marital relationships and, in turn, the symptoms of mental health disorders such as depression anxiety? Although there is scientific evidence to support the idea that it affects symptoms, this study did not find support for that hypothesis.”
Personality traits and mental health
“Instead, in our exploratory analysis, we found evidence that certain personality traits are important in predicting specific symptoms of mental health disorders,” Dassineau said. “For example, we found that changes in the tendency to behave in a positive, prosocial manner predicted changes in the majority of symptoms of mental health disorders over time.”
“Additionally, when we compared participants to each other, we found that a tendency to be impulsive was associated with fewer mental health symptoms. Impulsivity is associated with many mental health symptoms, so this The findings were surprising. One explanation for this is that it may not be so important that someone is generally impulsive, but rather how that impulsivity fluctuates that may be a symptom of a mental health disorder. Of course, this is only one plausible explanation for this finding and requires future research.”
“Overall, the average person should take away that personality plays an important role in how we experience the world, including how we experience symptoms of mental health disorders. ,” Dassineaux told SciPost.
Sample characteristics and future research directions
However, this sample included newlywed couples who generally reported high levels of marital satisfaction. This uniformity of high levels of satisfaction may mean that there was not enough variation in marital satisfaction to significantly influence mental health outcomes. Essentially, if most participants are satisfied with their marriage, it becomes difficult to assess how changes in satisfaction affect their mental health.
Similarly, the non-clinical nature of the sample, with participants generally exhibiting low levels of psychopathology, may mean that the study did not capture a sufficiently wide range of mental health problems. there is. This limited range may have contributed to the inability to detect mediation effects.
Future research could investigate these dynamics in more diverse samples, including those with higher levels of relationship dissatisfaction and more severe mental health problems. There are also potential avenues to investigate how power relations within couples, established long before marriage, influence these relationships.
“The fact that we found no support for the hypothesis that relationship satisfaction influences mental health was surprising, but this also suggests that relationship satisfaction affects everyone in terms of mental health and well-being. I also think it raises interesting questions about what will have the most impact,” Dassineau explained. “This sample was a primarily homogeneous group of newlyweds, so I think there are many other groups of people that could be studied in this regard.”
the study, “Relationships among personality, relationship satisfaction, and psychopathology in a three-wave longitudinal study” is written by Samantha Dassino, Skye Napolitano, and Susan C. South.
