A study of the relationship between Big-five personality traits and communication styles with marital satisfaction of married students majoring in public universities of Tehran

Abstract

The present study was conducted to explore the effect of Big-five personality traits and communication styles on the marital satisfaction of married students majoring in public universities of Tehran. To achieve this goal, as many as 100 subjects (50 couples) were selected using multi-stage cluster sampling from among public universities of Tehran. They filled NEO, Communication Styles and Enrich Marital Satisfaction questionnaires. Findings indicated neuroticism trait, of the personality questionnaire, had a negative and significant relationship with marital satisfaction; while the four other factors, i.e., agreeableness, conscientious, extraversion and openness to experience, had a significant and positive relationship with marital satisfaction. It was also found that the Expectation-withdrawal and Mutual Avoidance communication styles had a negative and significant relationship with marital satisfaction, while for mutual constructive communication style the relationship was significant and positive. Stepwise Regression analysis revealed Neuroticism trait was the first predictive factor of marital satisfaction and agreeableness, conscientious, extraversion and openness to experience were the next factors predicting the variable, respectively. As regards communication styles, mutual constructive communication style proved to be the first, and Expectation-Withdrawal and Mutual Avoidance styles the next factors predicting marital satisfaction.