ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
How both partners' individual differences, stress, and behavior predict change in relationship satisfaction: Extending the VSA model.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Relational Nature of Attachment and Power: Attachment Avoidance and Withdrawal Limit Partners' Power.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2026Article
- Understanding the Associations Between Attachment Insecurity, Emotional Flooding, and Conflict Behaviors in Prenatal Couples.Journal of marital and family therapy · 2026Article
- The Role of Communication in Romantic Attachment and Relationship Satisfaction: A Dyadic Longitudinal Study.Journal of marital and family therapy · 2026Article
- Family resilience and health-related quality of life in children with malignant bone tumors: implications for pediatric oncology nursing.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Stress and loneliness in marriage: does loneliness moderate the effects of daily stress on marital satisfaction?Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
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- Dyadic Coping and Communication as Predictors of 10-Year Relationship Satisfaction Subgroup Trajectories in Stable Romantic Couples.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- A Safe Haven Through Attachment: A Dyadic Perspective on the Association Between Cumulative Childhood Trauma and Relationship Satisfaction.Journal of interpersonal violence · 2025Article
- Dyadic Analysis of Cumulative Childhood Trauma and Relationship Satisfaction: The Role of Parental Alliance.Journal of marital and family therapy · 2025Article
- Contextualizing marital dissatisfaction: examining profiles of discordant spouses across life domains.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The explanatory role of psychological distress in the link between role blurring and relationship satisfaction: A dyadic study.Journal of marital and family therapy · 2025Article
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- Intimate Partner Violence Risk Factors: A Vulnerability-Adaptation Stress Model Approach.Journal of interpersonal violence · 2024Article
- Dyadic Moderators of the Minority Stress-HIV Risk Association in Male Couples.AIDS and behavior · 2024Article
- Sexual growth and destiny beliefs: Longitudinal associations with dyadic coping among couples seeking medically assisted reproduction.The journal of sexual medicine · 2023Article
- Here one time, gone the next: Fluctuations in support received and provided predict changes in relationship satisfaction across the transition to parenthood.Journal of personality and social psychology · 2023Article
- How Relationship Satisfaction and Negative Communication Trajectories Change in Emerging Adults' Dating Relationships: A Group-Based Dual Trajectory Analysis.Emerging adulthood (Print) · 2023Article
- People with higher relationship satisfaction use more humor, valuing, and receptive listening to regulate their partners' emotions.Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2023Article
- Does income moderate basic relationship processes?Journal of marriage and the family · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
We pooled data from 10 longitudinal studies of 1,104 married couples to test the Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation (VSA) model of change in relationship satisfaction. Studies contained both spouses' self-reports of neuroticism, attachment anxiety, and attachment avoidance; observational measures of engagement and opposition during problem-solving discussions at baseline; and repeated reports of both spouses' stress and marital satisfaction over several years. Consistent with the VSA model, all three individual and partner qualities predicted changes in marital satisfaction that were mediated by observations of behavior and moderated by both partners' experiences with stress. In contrast to the VSA model, however, rather than accentuating the association between individual differences and behavior, both partners' stress moderated the strength, and even direction, of the association between behavior and changes in marital satisfaction over time. Taken together, these findings indicate that 1) qualities of both couple members shape their behavioral exchanges, 2) these behaviors explain how individuals and their partners' enduring qualities predict relationship satisfaction, and 3) stress experienced by both couple members strongly determines how enduring qualities and behavior predict changes in relationship satisfaction over time. The complex interplay among both partners' enduring qualities, stress, and behavior helps explain why studies may fail to document direct main effects of own and partner enduring qualities and behavior on changes in relationship satisfaction over time.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.