Conflict Avoider Style of Marriage Scale

Abstract

The Conflict Avoider Style of Marriage scale is a specialized psychometric instrument designed to quantify the degree to which married or committed couples utilize avoidance behavior and emotional restraint when navigating interpersonal conflict within their relationship. This scale is firmly rooted in the empirical and longitudinal research conducted by John M. Gottman concerning interaction styles that predict relationship stability and long-term success.

The instrument measures a partner’s tendency to minimize disagreements, suppress negative affect, and rely on either internal coping mechanisms or external structures—such as adherence to traditional roles or religious values—to maintain perceived harmony. The core theoretical premise is that avoidance, when managed effectively, can be a successful pathway to a satisfying marriage, provided it does not lead to chronic emotional distance or the accumulation of permanently unresolved issues. This tool is primarily utilized in clinical assessment, couples counseling, and academic research settings to categorize and understand dyadic communication patterns.

Keywords

Marital conflict, conflict avoidance, John M. Gottman, marital satisfaction, relationship assessment, psychological scale, communication style, emotional containment, dyadic interaction, psychometric instrument.

Authors

John M. Gottman

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Conflict Avoider Style of Marriage scale is to objectively identify and quantify the specific behavioral patterns associated with the Conflict Avoider marital style. This style is one of the three theoretically sound, stable marital interaction styles identified in Gottman’s research, alongside the Validating and Volatile styles. The scale provides crucial, objective data regarding a couple’s preferred mechanism for handling relational tension and disagreement.

By assessing specific behaviors, such as emotional suppression, the maintenance of separate spheres of interest, and the tendency to rely on the passage of time rather than direct confrontation for resolution, the scale allows clinicians and researchers to determine the extent and nature of conflict avoidance. Furthermore, it functions as a vital diagnostic and insight-generating tool within couples counseling, enabling partners to understand their own coping mechanisms and evaluate whether their avoidance strategies are constructive for long-term marital satisfaction or, conversely, contributing to underlying emotional stagnation.

Construct

The scale measures the psychological construct known as the Conflict Avoider Style. This construct describes a deliberate or implicit strategy employed by both partners to minimize confrontation, prioritize emotional equilibrium, and maintain a high degree of individual autonomy within the marriage. The style is not inherently pathological; rather, it represents a distinct, often successful, mechanism for managing the inevitable differences that arise in a long-term relationship.

The construct is operationalized through several key behavioral and philosophical dimensions:

• Emotional Suppression: The conscious or unconscious withholding of negative feelings, particularly anger or frustration, deemed necessary to prevent emotional disruption or harm to the spouse.
• Autonomy and Separateness: A strong preference for individual coping strategies, separate social lives, and distinct domains of interest, which naturally limits the potential points of shared conflict.
• Non-Analysis and Pragmatism: The belief that intense psychological analysis of underlying feelings or motivations during disagreements is counterproductive, often leading to escalation rather than resolution.
• Traditionalism and External Structure: The reliance on predefined, external guidelines, such as established gender roles, religious doctrines, or cultural values, to resolve disputes without the need for intense, personalized negotiation or emotional processing.

Validity

The construct validity of the scale is robustly supported by its empirical foundation in the extensive, multi-decade longitudinal research conducted by John M. Gottman at the University of Washington’s “Love Lab.” The items included in the scale directly operationalize the observable behaviors and self-reported philosophies characteristic of couples categorized as “Conflict Avoiders” in controlled observational studies.

In clinical application, the scale demonstrates criterion validity by correlating significantly with objective behavioral markers, such as low levels of physiological arousal (e.g., heart rate increase) and observed emotional restraint during structured conflict discussions. High scores on this scale are theoretically predictive of marital stability for couples who successfully maintain emotional distance while balancing it with high levels of positive interaction outside of conflict. Crucially, the scale helps differentiate stable Conflict Avoiders from couples whose avoidance leads to destructive patterns associated with the “Four Horsemen” of relationship decline (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling).

Reliability

Although specific psychometric documentation, such as precise Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, is typically reserved for the primary research publications (e.g., Gottman, 2007), the scale is anticipated to exhibit strong psychometric reliability. Its inclusion within a comprehensive, validated marital assessment battery developed by the Gottman Institute ensures rigorous development standards.

The instrument is expected to demonstrate high internal consistency, ensuring that the 29 items consistently measure the singular construct or the closely related sub-factors that define conflict avoidance behavior. Furthermore, acceptable levels of test-retest reliability are anticipated, given that a couple’s established, long-term conflict management style is a deeply entrenched and stable aspect of their relationship dynamics.

Factor Analysis

Given that the scale comprises 29 items covering a wide range of behaviors—from internal emotional coping and self-sufficiency to reliance on external structural roles and communication philosophy—a detailed factor analysis of the Conflict Avoider Style of Marriage scale is highly likely to reveal multiple, inter-correlated subscales rather than a single unified factor. These resulting factors aid researchers in distinguishing the nuances and varied manifestations of the avoidance style.

Anticipated factor loadings based on the item content include:

• A factor primarily centered on Emotional Withdrawal and Self-Sufficiency, encompassing items related to hiding negative feelings, preferring to work through problems alone, and avoiding strong emotional displays.
• A factor related to Belief in Traditional Roles and External Values, grouping items that reference adherence to clear husband/wife roles, religious guidance, or cultural structures for dispute resolution.
• A factor measuring Avoidance of Direct Conflict Engagement, including items addressing the futility of arguing, the strategy of dropping topics of disagreement, and the belief that talking often makes problems worse.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report questionnaire / Relationship assessment tool

Format: True/False dichotomous response format (29 items).

Language Available: English (Original research language).

Population Group: Married or committed adult couples.

Age Group: Adults.

Population Details: Used primarily in clinical settings, marital counseling, and academic research focused on predicting relationship outcomes based on specific dyadic interaction patterns.

Test Methodology: Individual administration where each partner independently responds to the items. The resulting scores are then analyzed together to characterize the couple’s shared conflict style profile.

Keywords

Psychological assessment, dyadic interaction, marital roles, relationship stability, emotional containment, Gottman Institute, University of Minnesota, traditional marriage, longitudinal study, relationship assessment.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A

Correspondence Address: N/A

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Conflict Avoider Style of Marriage scale is proprietary content associated with the research of John M. Gottman and the intellectual property of The Gottman Institute. Commercial and clinical use of the assessment tool is typically governed by licensing and permissions granted through the copyright holders.

The scale was prominently featured and disseminated publicly around the publication of the seminal work, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, which was published in 2007.

Reference’s

Gottman, John M. (2007). Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. London. Copyright to John M. Gottman, All Rights Reserved.

Items of the Conflict Avoider Style of Marriage Scale

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Answer True or False

1. I will often hide my feelings to avoid hurting my spouse.
2. When we disagree‚ I don’t believe there is much point in analyzing our feelings and motivations.
3. When we disagree‚ we often solve the problem by going back to our basic beliefs about the different roles of men and women in marriage.
4. We have a lot of separate friends.
5. It is important to attend a church or synagogue regularly.
6. Many marital conflicts are solved just through the passing of time.
7. We each do a lot of things on our own.
8. During a marital conflict‚ there is not much to be gained from figuring out what is happening on a psychological level.
9. Our religious values gives us a clear sense of life’s purposes.
10. When I’m moody I prefer to be left alone until I get over it.
11. I don’t feel very comfortable with strong displays of negative emotion in my marriage.
12. We turn to our basic religious or cultural values for guidance when resolving conflicts.
13. I just accept most of the things in my marriage that I can’t change.
14. We often agree not to talk about things we disagree about.
15. In our marriage there is a fairly clear line between the husband’s and wife’s roles.
16. We just don’t seem to disagree very much.
17. When we have some difference of opinion we often just dr‎op the topic.
18. We hardly ever have much to argue about.
19. A lot of talking about disagreements often makes matters worse.
20. There are some personal areas in my life that I prefer not to discuss with my spouse.
21. There is not much point in trying to persuade my partner of my viewpoint.
22. There’s not much to be gained by getting openly angry with my spouse.
23. Thinking positively solves a lot of marital issues.
24. In marriage it is usually best to stick to the traditional values about men and women.
25. I prefer to work out many of my negative feeling on my own.
26. Coping over a lot of negative feeling in a marital discussion usually makes things worse.
27. If you just relax about problems‚ they have a way of working themselves out.
28. When we talk about our problems we find they just aren’t that important in the overall picture of our marriage.
29. Men and women ought to have separate roles in marriage.