Psychosomatic Medicine, Vol 48, Issue 3 172-186, Copyright © 1986 by American Psychosomatic Society

ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Spouse-pair similarity on the California Psychological Inventory with reference to husband's coronary heart disease

GE Swan, D Carmelli and RH Rosenman

The present article reports on the results of several comparisons between 45 adult males with diagnosed coronary heart disease (cases) and their wives and 50 adult males without coronary heart disease (noncases) and their wives recruited from the Western Collaborative Group Study. The California Psychological Inventory and a life satisfaction inventory were administered to the couples in the two types of families. Results indicate that although both sets of husbands and wives fell within the well-functioning range on the CPI, wives of cases were significantly more dominant and less flexible than wives of noncase husbands. Case husbands were significantly more dominant than noncase husbands. No mean differences existed between case and noncase husbands and wives on a variety of life satisfaction measures. Computation of spouse-pair correlations revealed a pattern of overall dissimilarity across the CPI scales for case couples and overall similarity for the noncase couples. The only scale on which case spouse pairs were significantly similar was one measuring depression. Noncase couples were significantly more similar than case couples on scales measuring sociability, self-acceptance, and socialization. Previous findings from the research literature in the fields of personality, cardiac rehabilitation, and assortative mating are used to generate three competing hypotheses relating the present findings to cross spouse disease associations.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				K. A. McGonagle, R. C. Kessler, and E. A. Schilling The Frequency and Determinants of Marital Disagreements in a Community Sample Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, November 1, 1992; 9(4): 507 - 524. [Abstract]