Publication
Title
Does the relationship between personality and divorce change over time? A cross-country comparison of marriage cohorts
Author
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate how associations between personality traits and divorce have changed over time. Competing hypotheses are derived based on social exchange theory, crisis theory, and changing selection into marriage. A combination of retrospective and prospective data on marriages contracted between 1972 and 2009 is used from the British Household Survey (n = 4169), the Divorce in Flanders study (n = 4377), and the German Socio-Economic Panel (n = 8155). Discrete-time event history models are estimated to look at changes over time in the associations between the Big Five personality traits and divorce. The results show generally similar associations between divorce and personality traits across Britain, Flanders and Germany, and display relatively little change over time. Divorce seems, in general, to have become characterized less by people who behave in unconventional ways (high openness to experience) and, to some extent, more by people that do not keep up social relations as much as others (low conscientiousness). These results are congruent with predictions derived from a social exchange perspective, where traits related to external barriers to divorce are expected to become less important as divorce becomes more common and less costly in social, legal and economic terms.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Acta sociologica : journal of the Scandinavian Sociological Association. - Copenhagen, 1955, currens
Publication
Copenhagen : 2018
ISSN
0001-6993 [print]
1502-3869 [online]
DOI
10.1177/0001699317709048
Volume/pages
61 :3 (2018) , p. 300-316
ISI
000439584900005
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 22.11.2017
Last edited 09.10.2023
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