Association of Interpersonal Cognitive Complexity with Communication Skill in Marriage: Moderating Effects of Marital Distress

Little research has examined the influence of social cognition on communicative behaviors that spouses exhibit in conversational interactions. The present study examined the associations between interpersonal cognitive complexity and three marital communication skills: communication effectiveness (g...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Family process 1995-03, Vol.34 (1), p.101-111
Main Authors: DENTON, WAYNE H., BURLESON, BRANT R., SPRENKLE, DOUGLAS H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition
Cognitive aspects
Communication
Communication skills
Couple and family
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Male
Marital stress
Marriage - psychology
Marriage - trends
Middle Aged
Probability
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Relationship
Sampling Studies
Sex Factors
Social psychology
Surveys and Questionnaires
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Summary:Little research has examined the influence of social cognition on communicative behaviors that spouses exhibit in conversational interactions. The present study examined the associations between interpersonal cognitive complexity and three marital communication skills: communication effectiveness (generating messages that have the desired outcome), predictive accuracy (anticipating accurately the effects of a message on a receiver), and perceptual accuracy (correctly inferring the intent of a message source). The study also evaluated whether marital distress moderated associations between cognitive complexity and communication skills. Participants (60 couples) discussed a problem from their own marriage and a vignette from the Inventory of Marital Conflicts (Olson & Ryder, 1970) using the communication box. Cognitive complexity was moderately associated with perceptual accuracy, weakly associated with communication effectiveness, and not associated with predictive accuracy. Subsidiary analyses revealed that associations between cognitive complexity and the communication skills were generally stronger in the sub‐sample of distressed couples than in the subsample of nondistressed couples.
ISSN:0014-7370
1545-5300
DOI:10.1111/j.1545-5300.1995.00101.x