Predicting marital instability from spouse and observer reports of marital interaction

This prospective study examines the relationship between the quality of marital interaction, both as perceived by spouses and as reported by outside observers, and marital instability and divorce in a sample of 436 long-time married couples from the rural Midwest. Discriminant function analysis showed that spousal hostility, net of warmth, predicted with 80% accuracy which couples would divorce or not divorce within a year and with 88% accuracy which couples would be in the two most extreme marital groups (most stable and least stable). In a structural equation model with latent constucts, we found that observer reports of behavioral interactions are related to marital instability both directly and indirectly through partners' perceptions of one another's behaviors.