Childhood Marital Conflict, Adult Anger

The study sought to examine the relationship between witnessing verbal marital conflict as a child and behavioral anger responses in adulthood. An underlying premise for the study was that verbal marital conflict could be an underlying cause of developmental and behavioral problems in adults who witnessed verbal marital conflict as a child. Previous studies focused on marital conflict in regards to physical conflict, leaving out verbal conflict. One hundred participants, who acknowledged witnessing verbal marital conflict as children, completed the Novaco Anger Scale (NAS; Novaco, 1994, 2003) and the Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale (CPIC; Grych et al., 1992).