Definition
- Communication in Relationships: The process of exchanging information, self-disclosure, and resolving conflicts, which influences relationship maintenance and satisfaction.
Communication is often cited as the reason to whether a relationship is well-maintained or likely to fall apart.
HintThe studies discussed in this section (Bradbury & Fincham (1992) and Gottman (1998)) can also be used to support the broader subtopic of why relationships change or end in personal relationships.
Key Ideas:
- Relationship-Enhancing Patterns: These communication patterns strengthen relationships by avoiding blame and not assuming the other person acted with negative intent. They focus on understanding and positive reinforcement.
- Distress-Maintaining Patterns: Unlike relationship-enhancing patterns, these contribute to relationship deterioration by placing blame, assuming negative intent, and failing to recognize positive behaviors.
- Social Penetration Theory: This theory explains how relationships develop gradually through self-disclosure. As individuals share more personal information to their partner, trust and intimacy grow.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Psychologist John Gottman identified four communication behaviors that predict relationship failure:
- Criticism – Attacking a person’s character rather than addressing a specific behavior.
- Contempt – Expressing disrespect, superiority, or mockery.
- Defensiveness – Avoiding responsibility by making excuses or counterattacking.
- Stonewalling – Withdrawing from interaction and refusing to engage.
- The Active Listening Model: Effective listening involves acknowledging the speaker’s feelings and concerns without becoming defensive, validating their emotions and demonstrating support, even when disagreements arise.
Bradbury & Fincham (1992):
Aim: To investigate how communication patterns relate to marital satisfaction.
Method: In an observational study, 47 couples completed a survey identifying the biggest problem in their marriage and its cause. After the individual session, couples discussed a solution together. Two trained coders assessed the interactions for relationship-enhancing or distress-maintaining patterns.
Results: Couples with lower marital satisfaction showed more distress-maintaining patterns.
Conclusion: Distress-maintaining communication patterns contribute to relationship breakdown by reinforcing negative interactions.
Evaluation:
- Bidirectional ambiguity as it is unclear whether communication patterns cause marital dissatisfaction or result from it.
- The use of researcher triangulation reduces bias.
- The study observed real couples, making the findings applicable to real-life relationships. However, the artificial setting of a study may have influenced how participants behaved, lowering the ecological validity.
- The study focused on Western couples, limiting generalizability.
- Some couples may have faced minor disagreements, while others dealt with serious conflicts. This inconsistency could have affected the extent to which distress-maintaining patterns were observed.
