developed by Howard Markman, a leading developer of a marital distress prevention program.
Using the talk table, partners take turns in both the speaker and listener roles. This enables them
to make two different ratings as they carry on their conversation: a rating of the impact their
partner's comments are having on them, and a rating of the intent they had of their own comments.
Impact and intent: impact refers to how you are affecting me, and intent refers to how I intended to
affect you.
The interesting question here is whether, and how, either or both of these self-reported behavioral
measures predict to marital satisfaction some years later. Does what
I intended, say, 3 years before
in this simple talk-table task, predict to how satisfied I am 3 years
later? Or is the impact you have
on me in that task a better predictor of my maritl satisfaction 3 years
later?
Look at the table of correlations and decide which predicts
best. Notice -- we don't include intent!
But rated Problem Intensity is somewhat predictive. What conclusions
can you draw
from this approach? Does it surprise you that reported behavior is
indicative of marital
quality so far down the road?
| Self-Report |
| Personality |