Mentalizing capacity and emotional styles in married people with and without marital conflict

Mentalizing capacity is a fundamental skill in mutually respectful, stable and trusting relationships. The main purpose of the research is to investigate and compare the mentalizing capacity and emotional styles (emotional health) of married people with and without marital conflict. In this research, 160 participants (40 women and 40 men in each group) were selected from two groups of married men and women with and without marital conflict through available and voluntary sampling. Both groups individually responded to the emotional styles questionnaires of Kesebir et al.'s (2019) and Dimitrijević et al.'s mentalization (2018). The results of the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed that there is a significant difference between the mentalizing capacity and the profile of the components of emotional styles (attitude towards life, resilience, social intuition, self-awareness, sensitivity to context and attention) of married people with and without conflict. The presence of unresolved conflicts in marital relationships reduces the mentalizing capacity and emotional health of people in the relationship. Therefore, these results reveal the necessity of providing measures to improve the mentalization capacity and emotional styles of high-conflict couples.