Citation

Smith DA, Peterson KM. Behav. Ther. 2008; 39(3): 300-312.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, 118 Haggar Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5636, USA. David.A.Smith.367@nd.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.beth.2007.09.002

PMID

18721643

Abstract

Depression and marital discord are related to feeling criticized by others, especially by spouses (e.g., Hooley, J. M., & Teasdale, J. D. 1989). This study evaluated the extent to which criticism was overperceived in relation to "actual" spousal critical comments, with actual critical comments being established by independent observers and by criticizing spouses themselves. Using dyadic interaction and questionnaire data from 72 married couples, signal detection and regression analyses suggested that both dysphoria and marital discord were associated with a general bias towards feeling criticized. Marital discord's association with criticality bias subsumed dysphoria's, but dysphoria's did not subsume marital discord's. Criticality bias also accounted for a significant proportion of perceived spousal criticism. A common cognitive process may underlie established associations among perceived criticism, dysphoria, and marital discord.

Language: en