Dominance in the Marriages of Affective Patients

Affectively ill patients, their spouses, and community persons were compared on issues of marital dominance, using the Conflict in Marriage Scale. Patients acknowledged, more often than their spouses, that the partner made final decisions in circumstances of disagreement on family matters. Women patients could be effectively discriminated from women spouses and from community women on this issue. Affectively ill women, in particular, saw themselves as yielding after disagreement to the decision of husbands who seldom changed an opinion; their male spouses seemed oblivious to these perceptions.