Attributions in marriage: Review and critique.

Abstract

The prevailing behavioral account of marriage must be expanded to include covert processes. This article therefore examines the attributions or explanations that spouses make for marital events. A review indicates that dissatisfied spouses, compared with satisfied spouses, make attributions for the partner's behavior that cast it in a negative light. Experimental, clinical outcome, and longitudinal data suggest further that attributions may influence marital satisfaction. Rival hypotheses for these findings are examined. Because continued empirical development in this domain depends on conceptual progress, a framework is presented that integrates attributions, behavior, and marital satisfaction. This framework points to several topics that require systematic study, and specific hypotheses are offered for research on these topics. It is concluded that the promising start made toward understanding marital attributions holds considerable potential for enriching behavioral conceptions of marriage.

Support behavior and relationship satisfaction in couples dealing with diabetes: Main and moderating effects.

“…These more benign attributions in turn may mitigate the negative impact on relationship satisfaction (for overviews see Bradbury & Fincham, 1990;Bradbury et al, 2000). Related to this, it is likely that protective buffering is more easily forgiven when levels of active engagement are high as people are then more inclined to make more benign attributions to this behavior.…”

“…These different attributions in turn can be expected to be differently associated with relationship satisfaction (for overviews see Bradbury & Fincham, 1990;Bradbury, Fincham, & Beach, 2000). For example, it has been found that perceiving negative partner behavior as stable and intentional was negatively associated with relationship satisfaction (Fincham & Bradbury, 1992).…”

The abstinence violation effect in child molesters

“…One of the major consequences of the cognitive revolution in psychology has been an increased interest in attribution and attributional theories, 57 particularly within social cognition (Sherman, Judd, & Park, 1989), interpersonal psychology (Anderson & Riger, 1991) and clinical psychology (Bradbury & Fincham, 1990;Brewin, 1988;Jack & Williams, 1991;Westen, 1991).…”

“…It is now in the process of providing the social-cognitive underpinning of cognitive-behavioural therapy (Bradbury & Fincham, 1990;Fosterling, 1986;Hilton, 1990;Iacobucci & McGill, 1991;Kenardy, Evans, & Oei, 1990;Weiner, 1986).…”

An empathy‐humility‐commitment model of forgiveness applied within family dyads

“…The problem is a frequent devaluing of the family member. By the time most families seek therapy, wounds are usually attended by complex causal attribution that are external, global and stable (Bradbury and Fincham, 1990;Weiner et al, 1991) and affectively negative. Furthermore, patterns of interaction are likely to be hurtful (Jacobson and Christensen, 1996) rather than focused on a single hurt.…”