Effect of Attachment Styles on Marital Satisfaction

  • Steephen Chellan Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Anugragha Institute of Social Science, Dindugu, TamilNadu, India
Keywords: Marital Satisfaction, Secure Attachment Style, Preoccupied Attachment Style, Dismissive Attachment Style, Fearful Attachment Style.

Abstract

Attaining satisfaction and happiness is the usual expectation in married life. However, the surfacing of discord and dissonance in marriage is also inevitable. The disturbances and disputes in married life initiate psycho-social vibrations in the cognitive, conative, and behavioural repertoire of married persons. The emerging struggles cripple togetherness and healthy behaviour of married people. Existing evidence has identified several psycho-social factors contributing to both marital satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Attachment theory provides an appropriate framework to understand the relational aspect of marital satisfaction. Researchers came out with four styles of attachment namely secure, preoccupied, dismissive, and fearful that helps to unearth the undercurrents of interpersonal relationships. They have proven that attachment styles have considerable and consistent influence on marital satisfaction. Particularly, secure attachment style systematically enhances marital satisfaction more than the other styles of attachment. Inquisitiveness of the researcher to verify the same on Indian population prompted this study.

Bharathiar University Marital Satisfaction Scale (BUMSS) developed by Chellan and Raj (2014) and the Attachment Styles Questionnaire (ASQ) developed byVan Oudenhoven, Hofstra and Bakker (2003) were used to collect relevant data for this study (N=1330). The collected data were subjected to One-way Analysis of Variance, Pearson Correlation analysis, and a Linear Multiple Regression analysis in order to identify the effect of attachment styles on marital satisfaction of the married individuals. Results confirmed the hypotheses, that, the attachment styles influenced the marital satisfaction; there were relationships between the attachment styles and marital satisfaction, and attachment styles contributed for marital satisfaction of the married individuals.

Published
2018-04-28
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