{"title":"Spouses' personalities and marital satisfaction in Chinese families.","authors":"Li Jia, Gerrit Antonides, Zhuomin Liu","doi":"10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1480570","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Considering the traditional Confucian values prevalent in Chinese society, we study the effects of the spouses' personalities and household sociodemographic circumstances on the marital satisfaction of marriage partners.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We evaluate the factors that contribute to marital satisfaction, using the 2018 wave of the Chinese Family Panel Survey, including 6,603 households. We use information on both spouses' Big-Five personality traits, and marital satisfaction. In addition, the effects of the household's sociodemographic factors on the spouses' marital satisfaction are estimated. We employ the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model to estimate the effects, using simultaneous equation modeling.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We find significant actor effects of personality, i.e., agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and extroversion, but few partner effects on marital satisfaction. In addition to other socioeconomic effects, we find strong actor effects of subjective social status on marital satisfaction for both spouses. The wife's level of education had a negative effect on her marital satisfaction.</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>The effects of the spouses' personalities and sociodemographic circumstances on their marital satisfaction fit the Confucian values fostered in China. The wife's double burden of having a job and taking care of household duties, negatively affecting her marital satisfaction, may be alleviated by proper government policies.</p>","PeriodicalId":12525,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Psychology","volume":"16 ","pages":"1480570"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11835996/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Frontiers in Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1480570","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Introduction: Considering the traditional Confucian values prevalent in Chinese society, we study the effects of the spouses' personalities and household sociodemographic circumstances on the marital satisfaction of marriage partners.
Methods: We evaluate the factors that contribute to marital satisfaction, using the 2018 wave of the Chinese Family Panel Survey, including 6,603 households. We use information on both spouses' Big-Five personality traits, and marital satisfaction. In addition, the effects of the household's sociodemographic factors on the spouses' marital satisfaction are estimated. We employ the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model to estimate the effects, using simultaneous equation modeling.
Results: We find significant actor effects of personality, i.e., agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and extroversion, but few partner effects on marital satisfaction. In addition to other socioeconomic effects, we find strong actor effects of subjective social status on marital satisfaction for both spouses. The wife's level of education had a negative effect on her marital satisfaction.
Discussion: The effects of the spouses' personalities and sociodemographic circumstances on their marital satisfaction fit the Confucian values fostered in China. The wife's double burden of having a job and taking care of household duties, negatively affecting her marital satisfaction, may be alleviated by proper government policies.
期刊介绍:
Frontiers in Psychology is the largest journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the psychological sciences, from clinical research to cognitive science, from perception to consciousness, from imaging studies to human factors, and from animal cognition to social psychology. Field Chief Editor Axel Cleeremans at the Free University of Brussels is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics, clinicians and the public worldwide. The journal publishes the best research across the entire field of psychology. Today, psychological science is becoming increasingly important at all levels of society, from the treatment of clinical disorders to our basic understanding of how the mind works. It is highly interdisciplinary, borrowing questions from philosophy, methods from neuroscience and insights from clinical practice - all in the goal of furthering our grasp of human nature and society, as well as our ability to develop new intervention methods.