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Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
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Memories of Feeling Misunderstood, and a Schema of Partner Empathic Responding: New Scales for Marital Research

Keith Sanford

Michigan State University, sanforl5{at}pilot.msu.edu

Two instruments were created to assess cognitions in marital relationships: these were a 4-minute speeded test to assess Memory Accessibility for Partner Not Understanding (MAPNU), and a 20-item Likert-type questionnaire to assess Schema of Partner Empathic Responses to Anger (SOPERA). Seventy-four married individuals (37 couples, ranging from happily married to mildly distressed) completed both cognitive measures, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale and the Areas of Change questionnaire. The cognitive measures produced high reliability coefficients and a high convergent validity coefficient. SOPERA was related to, but not redundant with, general marital adjustment, and these two constructs best fit a two-dimensional as compared to a one-dimensional confirmatory factor analysis model. MAPNU was not correlated with length of marriage nor with a measure of general response production. Having a partner who demonstrated accurate understanding on the Areas of Change questionnaire was related to scores on both MAPNU and SOPERA, and path analysis supported a model in which SOPERA mediates the relationship between partner accurate understanding and relationship satisfaction.

Key Words: cognition • marital relationships • measurement

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Vol. 15, No. 4, 490-501 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/0265407598154003
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K. Sanford
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Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, June 1, 2003; 20(3): 391 - 402.
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