Spouses' perceptions of life events within marriage

Abstract

Married couples rated, as individuals, 25 possible life events within their marriages for the stressful effects of each event on the self, on the spouse and as seen by the spouse to be the effects on the self. Husbands and wives both perceived their spouse's stress as being similar to their own, and both supposed their spouse to have perceived their own stress accurately. In fact, for the great majority of events, the husband's and wives' ratings of stress did not correlate significantly, nor did their perceptions of each other's stress nor were the estimated effects for the spouse correlated with how the spouse thought they would have been estimated. However, the correlations between ratings of the spouse's stress and ratings of how the spouse was estimated to have perceived the rater's stress were almost all significant and positive. Taken together, these findings imply that spouses think their stress is shared more, and that they are understood better, by their partners than in the case. The results may have a bearing on the nature of the buffering effect of a confidant. It is suggested that the results can be generalized beyond the religious and class limits of the group studied.