CORRELATES OF EXPRESSED AND FELT EMOTION DURING MARITAL CONFLICT - SATISFACTION, PERSONALITY, PROCESS, AND OUTCOME

Relationships among marital satisfaction, personality, felt and expres sed affects, and conflict resolution during conflict discussions of ma rried couples were assessed. Specific affects were measured using a be havioral coding system (SPAFF) and a self-report measure (POMS). Corre lations between behaviorally coded and self-reported affects varied ac ross specific emotions. Generally, self-reported affects correlated mo re highly than expressed affects with conflict resolution, marital sat isfaction, and neuroticism. Neuroticism correlated with wives' felt an d expressed affects and with husbands' felt, but not expressed, negati ve affects. Extraversion correlated with husbands' and wives' expresse d anger and with husbands' self-reported anger. Felt and expressed neg ative affect correlated negatively with degree of reported conflict re solution. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.