You can't always get what you want, but can you get what you need? Personality traits and social support in marriage

The current study examines associations among support recipients' personality traits, social support behavior in marital interactions, and perceptions of partner social support provided during marital interactions. Sixty-six married couples participated in the study. Couples completed two measures of personality traits, and participated in two support-focused interactions. Each spouse completed ratings of satisfaction with the partner's support following discussion of an achievement-related stressor. Frequencies of four types of social support behavior were observationally coded for each spouse during his/her turn as support provider. Patterns of associations among personality traits, support behavior provided by the spouse, and satisfaction with support varied across husbands and wives. Husbands with lower levels of emotional stability and/or lower levels of conscientiousness received more esteem support from wives. Husbands with low levels of conscientiousness also received more informational support from wives. In addition, the association between the amount of esteem support provided by wives and husbands' satisfaction with support was moderated by both husbands' emotional stability and conscientiousness. For wives, conscientiousness and emotional stability positively predicted satisfaction with support from husbands. The moderating effect for wives indicated that the association between the amount of informational support provided by husbands and wives' satisfaction with support depended on wives' conscientiousness. Additional analyses indicated that spouses within couples demonstrated similarity in support behavior, but dissimilarity in personality traits. Discussion focuses on the differences in patterns of associations across husbands and wives, and the implications for relevant theories of social support and personality.