Findings showed that (a) greater downregulation of wives’ negative experience and behavior predicted greater marital satisfaction for wives and husbands concurrently and (b) greater downregulation of wives’ negative behavior predicted increases in wives’ marital satisfaction longitudinally. Wives’ use of constructive communication (measured between Waves 1 and 2) mediated the longitudinal associations. These results show the benefits of wives’ downregulation of negative emotion during conflict for marital satisfaction and point to wives’ constructive communication as a mediating pathway.
Interesting that their results are so gender-specific. I wonder why.
Of course, this being American science, I can’t find out
Ironically, there’s more information in a UC Berkeley news release.
Update: More form one of the authors in this piece in Psychology Today.