Effects of marital and co-worker relationships on negative affect: Testing the central role of marriage

Abstract Many authors have noted the importance of the marital relationship for regulating mood. Marriage is asserted to be a primary source of both social support and interpersonal stress. In the current investigation, an index of salient social support irrespective of source and an index of salient interpersonal stress irrespective of source were found to be related to level of negative affective symptoms. As predicted, the marital relationship was found to be the most frequently named source of support, but co-workers were named equally often as a source of interpersonal stress. Marital satisfaction was found to be the most consequential interpersonal variable for predicting level of negative affect.