Role of Personality Characteristics, Religious Attitude and Source of Individual Control in the Quality of Retired People's Marital Relationships

Abstract

Retirement phenomenon like the other transitional experiences affect people’s marital satisfaction and can cause tension, disagreement and discontent at the end of adulthood. So, this research was carried out to evaluate role of personality characteristics, religious attitude and source of individual control in predicting quality of retired people’s marital relationships. The research method was survey and correlational. The statistical population included all retired people in Nahavand that 200 of them were selected as sample of the research through simple random sampling based on backgrounds of previous researches. Instruments of the research included Short form of NEO personality questionnaire, religious attitudes scales of Khodayarifard et al, Rutter’s control source and Golombok-Rust's marital status. Data was analyzed through Pearson correlation and multiple regression. Results showed that marital incompatibility has positive correlation with mental affliction and negative correlation with extraversion, openness to experience, agreeability and conscientiousness. Also, a significant negative relationship was obtained between people’s religious attitude and their marital status and there was no significant relationship between control source and marital quality. As well based on analysis of the results, mental affliction, extraversion, agreeability and religious attitude could significantly predict 42 percent of variance of the dependent variable, that is, marital quality. Based on findings of the research, it can be said that people’s marital status especially in retirement period is affected by people’s personality traits and religious attitudes.

Keywords

• personality characteristic
• religious attitude
• control source
• marital quality
• retirement