Pronouns in Marital Interaction

Abstract

Recent studies in social psychology have found that the frequency of certain words in people's speech and writing is related to psychological aspects of their personal health. We investigated whether counts of "self" and "other" pronouns used by 59 couples engaged in a problem-solving discussion were related to indices of marital health. One spouse in each couple had a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder or panic disorder with agoraphobia; 50% of the patients and 40% of their spouses reported marital dissatisfaction. Regardless of patients' diagnostic status, spouses who used more second-person pronouns were more negative during interactions, whereas those who used more first-person plural pronouns produced more positive problem solutions, even when negative behavior was statistically controlled. Moreover, use of first-person singular pronouns was positively associated with marital satisfaction. These findings suggest that pronouns used by spouses during conflict-resolution discussions provide insight into the quality of their interactions and marriages.

Forgiveness in personal relationships: Its malleability and powerful consequences

“…These effects remained even after controlling for level of commitment to the offender, severity of the offence, and how long ago the offence took place. Although such differences in language use are very subtle, they appear to be related to several indicators of relationship functioning (Acitelli, 1998;Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992;Simmons, Gordon, & Chambless, 2005).…”

How Taking a Word for a Word Can Be Problematic: Context-Dependent Linguistic Markers of Extraversion and Neuroticism

“…In contrast, Pennebaker & King (1999) found that women consistently used "I", "me", and "my" at higher rates in personal essays. Finally, Simmons et al (2005) found a positive relationship between first person singular use in marital interactions and relationship satisfaction. In contrast, Sillars, Shellen, McIntosh and Pomegranate (1997) reported a negative correlation based on a slightly different design.…”

Monitoring Pronouns in Conflicts

“…Pennebaker and Lay (2002) have discussed that "we" can variously be a marker of communal perspective and occasionally used as a "royal we" signaling power differences ("We have to clean this mess up"). Although the empirical evidence that "we"-talk has been replicated several times in different labs (Seider et al, 2009;Sillars et al, 1997;Simmons et al, 2005), the limitations of the LIWC-based counting approach is that the linguistic context cannot be taken into account and needs to be investigated with other language analysis methods. Accordingly, on one hand higher use of "we"-talk by male participants might mirror the de-escalation behavior of male partners in previous findings by applying a communal perspective over the discussion (Carstensen, 1995).…”

“…In contrast, "we"-words such as "we", "our", or "ours" are found to reflect togetherness, "we"-ness, and a communal orientation (Pennebaker & Lay, 2002). "We"-talk in couples was related to higher commitment (Agnew, Van Lange, Rusbult, & Langston, 1998), positive changes of symptoms in patients with heart failure (Rohrbaugh, Mehl, Shoham, Reilly, & Ewy, 2008), better health related behavior in patients with problematic alcohol use (Rentscher et al, 2015) and in smokers with lung problems (Rohrbaugh, Shoham, Skoyen, Jensen, & Mehl, 2012), better dyadic adjustment in couples (Robbins, Mehl, Smith, & Weihs 2013), and more positive solutions when discussing the top issue facing their relationship (Simmons et al, 2005). "We"-talk has been studied in conflict situations and found to be related to less negative emotion in middle-aged and old couples (Seider, Hirschberger, Nelson, & Levenson, 2009) and it was related to high relationship satisfaction in couples (Sillars et al, 1997).…”

“…The use of "You"-words such as "you" and "yours" in couple and family conversations has been linked with the notion of separateness, distancing, arguing, and blaming (Georgiou, Black, & Narayanan, 2011), and was related to less family adjustment (Robbins, Mehl, Smith, & Weihs, 2013), less marital satisfaction in middleaged/old couples and in young couples (Sillars et al, 1997;Slatcher, Vazire, & Pennebaker, 2008), and more negative behaviors in marital interactions (Simmons, Gordon, & Chambless, 2005). Thus, "you"-talk in conflict situations seems to be an indicator of confrontational communication behaviors.…”