The mediating role of emotion regulation in the relationship between attribution styles and marital satisfaction

This study aimed to examine the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties in the relationship between marital satisfaction and attributional styles. A total of 405 people, 219 (54.1%) women and 186 (45.9%) men, participated in the research. Demographic data form, Marital Life Scale (Tezer, 1996), Relationship Attribution Measure (Tutarel-Kışlak, 1997) and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Rugancı and Gençöz, 2010) were used to collect data from the participants. Data were analyzed with SPSS 26 and Hayes Process Macro plugin. According to the independent sample t test results, marital satisfaction and emotion regulation do not differ according to gender. However, causal attributions of generality and responsibility attributions of motivation are more negative in women than in men. Marital satisfaction and attributions do not show a significant difference between individuals with undergraduate and graduate education, but those with undergraduate education experience more difficulty in regulating emotions than those with graduate level education. Marital satisfaction, difficulty in regulating emotions, and attributions do not differ according to marriage type. According to the correlation analysis results, there is no significant relationship between marriage duration and marital satisfaction and attributions. However, as the duration of marriage increases, difficulty in regulating emotions decreases. As the income level increases, marital satisfaction increases, emotion regulation, all dimensions of responsibility attributions (intention, motivation, blame) and stability and generality dimensions of causal attributions become more positive. There is no significant relationship between the number of children and marital satisfaction, difficulty in emotion regulation and attributions. According to the results of mediation analysis, attributions predict marital satisfaction negatively and difficulty in emotion regulation positively. Difficulty in emotion regulation negatively predicts marital satisfaction. Difficulty in emotion regulation has a mediator role in the relationship between marital satisfaction and attributional styles. This result means that attributions indirectly affect marital satisfaction through emotion regulation. The study also found that attributions directly affect marital satisfaction. The direct effect of attributional styles on marital satisfaction points to the importance of intervention programs to be developed for attributional styles. Considering the finding that attributional styles remain constant over time, early interventions to reduce negative attributions towards the partner's behavior are thought to be very important. Determining the mediating role of emotion regulation on marital satisfaction may also contribute to more effective and quiker results compared to attribution styles that have a relatively stabil feature, by ensuring that psychological interventions aiming to increase marital satisfaction focus on emotional regulation. Keywords: Difficulty in emotional regulation, marital satisfaction, causal attributions, responsibility attributions, attributional styles