Locus of Control and Marital Satisfaction: Couple Perspectives Using Australian Data

Wang-Sheng Lee and Terra McKinnish

No 12599, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We investigate the effect of own and partner locus of control (LOC) on marital satisfaction using household longitudinal data from Australia. We also examine how the evolution of marital satisfaction over time depends on LOC. LOC indicates whether one believes that one's outcomes are more under personal control (internal LOC) or more under the control of external forces such as luck, fate or powerful others (external LOC). LOC orientation likely affects spouses' perception of marital problems and their willingness to utilize relationship-maintenance strategies when marital problems arise. We find that more internal LOC is associated with higher marital satisfaction and that own LOC matters more for marital satisfaction than spouse's LOC. Couples in which the husband is more externally oriented experience declines in marital satisfaction over time relative to couples in which the husband is more internally oriented.

Keywords: assortative matching; locus of control; marital duration; marital satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2019-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Psychology, 2019, 74, Article 102205.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12599.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Locus of control and marital satisfaction: Couple perspectives using Australian data (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12599

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().