Papers by Benjamin Karney
Couples coping with stress: Emerging perspectives on dyadic coping., 2005
Developments in the Study of Couple Interaction, 2002
Journal of Marriage and Family, 2012
PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2010
Summarizes analyses of existing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) studies for war zone veteran... more Summarizes analyses of existing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) studies for war zone veterans, finding that the prevalence estimates vary widely and are linked to the use of different PTSD diagnostic definitions and divergent study samples.
American journal of health behavior
Journal of Family Psychology, 2014
Although couples' managem... more Although couples' management of differences and problems is widely assumed to be central to the course and outcome of their relationships, some theoretical perspectives hold that marital conflicts increase over the newlywed years, whereas others maintain that couples' problems remain stable. We tested these opposing views by examining changes in marital problems and marital satisfaction over the first 4 years of marriage in a sample of 169 newlywed couples. Although marital satisfaction declined on average, overall levels of marital problems remained stable. Analyses of 19 specific problems generally revealed considerable stability as well, although husbands and wives rated showing affection as increasingly problematic over time. These findings challenge longstanding assumptions regarding the role of accumulating conflict in marital functioning over time and suggest that specific and overall problems in marriage largely remain stable over the newlywed years. Implications for theory and clinical practice are discussed.
CHAPTER FIVE Predicting the Immediate and Long-Term Consequences of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorde... more CHAPTER FIVE Predicting the Immediate and Long-Term Consequences of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, and Traumatic Brain Injury in Veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom Benjamin R. Karney, Rajeev Ramchand, Karen Chan ...
Knowledge Structures in Close Relationships: A Social Psychological Approach Edited by Garth JO F... more Knowledge Structures in Close Relationships: A Social Psychological Approach Edited by Garth JO Fletcher University of Canterbury and Julie Fitness Macquarie University LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS 1996 Mahwah, New Jersey -iii-.
Marriages and other intimate partnerships are facilitated or constrained by the social networks w... more Marriages and other intimate partnerships are facilitated or constrained by the social networks within which they are embedded. To date, methods used to assess the social networks of couples have been limited to global ratings of social network characteristics or network data collected from each partner separately. In the current article, the authors offer new tools for expanding on the existing literature by describing methods of collecting and analyzing duocentric social networks, that is, the combined social networks of couples. They provide an overview of the key considerations for measuring duocentric networks, such as how and why to combine separate network interviews with partners into one shared duocentric network, the number of network members to assess, and the implications of different network operationalizations.
Fletcher/Blackwell, 2003
Page 1. 32 Karney, McNulty, and Bradbury Chapter Two Cognition and the Development of Close Relat... more Page 1. 32 Karney, McNulty, and Bradbury Chapter Two Cognition and the Development of Close Relationships Benjamin R. Karney, James K. McNulty, and Thomas N. Bradbury Introduction Although close relationships generally ...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Compared to unmarried individuals married individuals report greater average wealth. A restricted... more Compared to unmarried individuals married individuals report greater average wealth. A restricted focus on current marital status risks misrepresenting the effects of marriage on wealth, as an increasing proportion of older adults have been divorced and remarried, having lived through the dramatic upheavals in family structure from the 1960s through the 1980s. To shed light on the associations between a lifetime of marriage events and wealth near retirement, we used panel data from the Health and Retirement Study and developed categories of marital experiences that acknowledged current status, type, number and date of past marital disruptions and total duration of time spent married across the lifespan. We found that the route individuals took to get to their current marital status were important predictors of wealth levels near retirement and were different for males and females. Observable differences in lifetime earnings, mortality risk, risk aversion, other characteristics such as education and number of children, explained much of the wealth difference between married and remarried individuals however neither observable characteristics nor sources of other wealth from pensions and Social Security were enough to explain the large differences in wealth accumulation between single and married women and individuals experiencing more than one marital disruption. Given the higher divorce rate, prevalence of multiple divorces and earlier age of divorce of the Baby Boomer cohort compared to earlier cohorts, an understanding of how marriage disruptions over the lifecycle impact savings is increasingly important for understanding the economic security of retirees.
Journal of Family Psychology, 2003
Given the emphasis on within-subject associations between depression and marital quality in recen... more Given the emphasis on within-subject associations between depression and marital quality in recent theory and practice, this study was undertaken with three goals: to examine within-subject associations between depressive symptoms and marital quality over time, to address gender differences in the magnitude and direction of these associations, and to determine whether neuroticism moderates the strength of these associations. A total
PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000
Relative to White families, Black families have been described as relying on extended social netw... more Relative to White families, Black families have been described as relying on extended social networks to compensate for other social and economic disadvantages. The presence or absence of supportive social networks should be especially relevant to young couples entering marriage, but to date there has been little effort to describe the social networks of comparable Black and White newlyweds. The current study addressed this gap by drawing on interviews with 57 first-married newlyweds from low-income communities to compare the composition and structure of Black and White couples' duocentric social networks. The results indicated that low-income Black couples entered marriage at a social disadvantage relative to White couples, with more family relationships but fewer positive relationships and fewer sources of emotional support (for wives), fewer connections to married individuals, and fewer shared relationships between spouses. Black couples' relative social disadvantages persisted even when various economic and demographic variables were controlled.
Support Processes in Intimate Relationships, 2010
Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2011
Body weight plays a significant role in attraction and relationship formation, but does it contin... more Body weight plays a significant role in attraction and relationship formation, but does it continue to shape more established relationships? The current 4-year longitudinal study of 169 newlywed couples addressed this question by examining the implications of own and partner body mass index (BMI) for the trajectory of marital satisfaction. In contrast to findings from studies of attraction and mate selection, own and partner BMI demonstrated inconsistent effects on the trajectory of satisfaction. However, consistent with predictions derived from interdependence theory, normative resource theories, and evolutionary perspectives, husbands were more satisfied initially and wives were more satisfied over time to the extent that wives had lower BMIs than their husbands, controlling for depression, income, education, and whether the relationship ended in divorce. These findings suggest that a dyadic perspective may be more appropriate than an individual one for understanding how partners' qualities shape established relationships such as marriage.
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Papers by Benjamin Karney