Attachment Styles and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies in Women with and without Marital Conflict

Today, one of the problems that society faces is the marital conflict and the increase of divorce. Marital conflict is influenced by many variables and issues and this issue has a great adverse impact on family structure and society also has enormous consequences and needs much all-out attention than before. This research also aimed at the same goal. The objective of the present research was to study and compare the cognitive emotion regulation strategies and attachment styles of women with and without marital conflicts. The method of the present study is descriptive and research design is casual-comparative. The statistical population of the present study consisted of all women referring counseling centers in Tehran during four months from January 2016 to April 2016. The sample size included 60 women with marital conflicts and 60 women without marital conflicts that were selected through convenience sampling method. Research data were collected through Sanaei questionnaire for marital conflicts, Garnefski’s questionnaire for cognitive emotion adjustment- short form (18 items); and Hazan and Shiever’s attachment styles, and were analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The analysis of data showed that there was a significant difference between the cognitive emotion adjustment strategies and attachment styles in women with and without marital conflicts. According to the findings which show difference between the cognitive emotion adjustment strategies and attachment styles in women with and without marital conflicts, we can conclude that these variables are directly or indirectly effective in creating or intensifying or continuing the marital conflicts.