ROLE ATTITUDES AND INTERACTION IN CONFLICT AMONG SPOUSES IN INFORMAL MARRIAGE

Abstract

There is a lack of development of the problem of marital conflicts in informal marriage in modern psychology. The purpose of this study is to examine the role attitudes and interaction in conflict among spouses who are in an informal marriage. The empirical study involved married couples at the stage of young marriage. In total, 80 people took part in the study, 40 of whom were spouses in an informal marriage and 40 people were in an official marriage. The average age of the respondents was 27.5 years. The quantitative and qualitative indicators of family attitudes, the distribution of roles in the family, as well as the parameters of interaction between spouses in conflict situations were measured. Methods of mathematical statistics were used for data processing: descriptive statistics; Mann-Whitney U-test; correlation analysis (Spearman's test). It has been established that spouses in an informal marriage actively enter into conflict interaction over the norms of behavior, in contrast to spouses who are in an official marriage. Spouses who are in an informal marriage are dominated by an egalitarian (partnership) family arrangement. The specificity of the connection between role attitudes and the peculiarities of interaction in conflict among spouses with different marital status has been revealed. It has been established that the general conflict in the interaction of spouses in an official marriage is associated with the attitude to fulfill the role of the owner/mistress, and for spouses in an informal marriage, interaction in the conflict is closely related to the attitude to the egalitarian type of marriage. The practical significance of the study lies in the possibility of providing psychological assistance to married couples experiencing problems in interaction and in the distribution of family roles. The results obtained can be used to create psychological work programs aimed at optimizing interaction in conflict situations between spouses with different marital status.