title: Dyadic Processes in Early Marriage: Attributions, Behavior, and Marital Quality.
abstract: Marital processes in early marriage are important for understanding couples' future marital quality. Spouses' attributions about a partner's behavior have been linked to marital quality, yet the mechanisms underlying this association remain largely unknown. Using couple data from the Family Transitions Project (N = 280 couples) across the first four years of marriage, results from actor-partner interdependence modeling demonstrated that early marriage responsibility attributions were associated with marital quality four years later, after controlling for initial marital quality. Further, couple's warm and hostile behavior two years into the marriage mediated the attribution-marital quality association. The results suggest that interventions designed to facilitate change in romantic relationships may benefit from addressing attributions for the partner's behavior, in addition to changing behaviors, as part of a dyadic process unfolding across time.
authors.affiliation: School of Family Studies and Human Services, Kansas State University.
authors.forename: Jared A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Durtschi
authors.affiliation: Department of Family and Child Sciences, Florida State University.
authors.forename: Frank D
authors.initials: FD
authors.lastname: Fincham
authors.affiliation: Department of Family and Child Sciences, Florida State University.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Department of Statistics, Iowa State University.
authors.forename: Frederick O
authors.initials: FO
authors.lastname: Lorenz
authors.affiliation: Department of Human and Community Development, University of California, Davis.
authors.forename: Rand D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Conger
keywords: attributions; behavior; marital quality; mediation