Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Is Sex Important To Marital Satisfaction Or Is Marital Satisfaction Important To Sex? Top-Down And Bottom-Up Processing In The Bedroom., Carolyn Anne Wenner

Masters Theses

How do people determine satisfaction in their relationships? One way may be to engage in bottom-up processing and rely on sexual satisfaction to arrive at an overall evaluation of the relationship. Another way may be to engage in top-down processing and allow the overall relationship satisfaction to color the perceptions of sexual satisfaction. The current study more rigorously examined the causal relationship between sexual and marital satisfaction through multilevel cross-lagged regression analyses of 8 waves of marital and sexual satisfaction reported by 72 newlywed couples over the first five years of marriage. Consistent with bottom-up processing, initial sexual satisfaction predicted …