Marital violence, marital distress, and attributions

Because empirical 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 of violence in a sample of 130 husbands. Study 2 demonstrated that the satisfaction-attribution association was independent of violence 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 support the focus on cognitive variables in recent models of marriage and marital violence.