Psychological risk factors for divorce: An overview

This article reviews current findings on psychological predictors for a neg ative marital development and divorce. Theories on divorce are not resumed, as this article focuses exclusively on research data. Results on the signi ficance of personality factors, cognitive variables, communication, attachm ent, stress, coping etc, are reviewed. The results show that currently impo rtant factors predicting the decline of marriages and their dissolution are known, which not only allow a rather reliable prediction, but also offer n ew possibilities in marital prevention. Whereas a number of assumed variabl es (such as physical attraction, status) do not reliably predict divorce, t wo main predictors have been found: neuroticism and a lack of competencies in the domains of marital communication, marital problem solving and indivi dual as well as dyadic coping. These findings are discussed in regard to ma rital interventions, where three empirically based approaches for the preve ntion of marital distress are presented.