50-4 A Study on The Relationships among Shyness, Marital Communication and Marital Satisfaction
| Su-Mei Su | |
| National Kaohsiung Normal University |
The vulnerability-stress-adaptation model (VSA) of marital development provides a framework for understanding the variations in marital quality and stability over time (Karney & Bradbury, 1995). Marital outcomes are a function of enduring vulnerabilities, stress events, and adaptive processes in the VSA model of marital development. The VSA model is a comprehensive model that explains how the quality and stability of marriage changes over time. However, this study only focuses on part components of the model. We used the VSA model to test the relationships among enduring vulnerabilities, adaptive processes, and marital quality. The VSA model emphasizes enduring vulnerabilities have direct effects on adaptive processes, and adaptive processes have direct effects on marital quality. Shyness is a personality trait that is stable over time. It is therefore an appropriate representation of enduring vulnerability. Shy individuals possess fewer social skills and abilities to initate discussions. Such low level of relationship self-efficacy may prevent them from managing interpersonal conflicts in families. Because communication is an important determinant in relationship satisfaction, shyness may negatively influence their marital satisfaction. This study examines shyness as enduring vulnerability, marital communication as an adaptive process, and marital satisfaction as indicator of marital quality. We hypothesized that shyness negatively influences marital communication and marital satisfaction, and marital communication positively influences marital satisfaction. Moreover, marital communication plays a mediating role between shyness and marital satisfaction. The subjects were 366 married adults in Taiwan. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze the data. Self-report data were gathered through the Shyness Scale revision, the Marital Communication Scale, and the Marital Satisfaction Scale. The Shyness Scale revision requires individuals to report agreement with 24 items using a 5-point Likert response scale. Composite reliability ranged from .77 to .85, and the average variance extracted for each dimension ranged from .41 to .54. The Cronbach α was between .84 and .91. The Marital Communication Scale is a 5-point Likert scale that measures the couples’ communication in marriage. The Cronbach α was between .88 and .94. We assessed marital satisfaction using the Marital Satisfaction Scale. This scale asks participants to evaluate their satisfaction in marriage using a 5-point Likert response scale (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree). The Cronbach α was between .73 and .88. The results are as follows: (1) Shyness has negative direct effects on marital communication. Shyness is significantly and negatively associated with marital communication. (2) Marital communication has positive direct effects on marital satisfaction. Marital communication can predict individual marital satisfaction. The better marital communication is, the higher marital satisfaction is. (3) Marital communication completely mediate the relationships between shyness and marital satisfaction. The impact of shyness on individual marital satisfaction is entirely through marital communication. (4) There are significant gender differences on the path coefficient from shyness to marital communication. The path coefficient for males is greater than the coefficient for females, indicating that shyness has worse effects on males’ marital communication than females’. In conclusion, this study shows that shyness negatively correlate with marital communication and marital satisfaction. Furthermore, marital communication completely mediate the relationship between shyness and marital satisfaction.The results of this study confirm the relationships among the three elements of "vulnerability", "adaptation process" and "marital quality" in the VSA model of marriage proposed by Karney and Bradbury (1995). The enduring vulnerability of shyness will affect the adaptation process of the individual in marriage, and the adaptation process of the individual in the marriage will affect marital satisfaction. Suggestions and implications for education, counseling, and future research are discussed.
Keywords
Marital communication, marital satisfaction, multi-group analysis, shyness.
Download