Contribution of number of children to marital-satisfaction magnitude

Abstract

The magnitude-estimation method from the social psychophysics was used to study the relative importance that men and women, with different number of children, assigned to 63 marital activities. The results were adjusted with a power function from which the exponent describes the rate of relative importance assigned to the activities. For men, the exponent was progressively lower as the number of children increased. For women, the exponent remained more or less at the same level regardless of the number of children. An analysis by marital-interaction areas corroborated the changes in the global exponents previously described. The importance of social psychophysics to analyze phenomena such as marital satisfaction is discussed.

Keywords

• Magnitude-estimation method
• power function
• social psychophysics
• marital satisfaction.