Social anhedonia, communication, and marital satisfaction in newlywed couples

OBJECTIVE: Social anhedonia is associated with disinterest in social interactions and poor relationship functioning, yet little is known about the specific mechanisms underlying associations between social anhedonia and romantic relationship behaviors and satisfaction. We examined the links between social anhedonia, perceptions of conflict communication patterns, and marital satisfaction. METHOD: The current research examined the role of social anhedonia on marital quality and functioning longitudinally across a year in a sample of 100 newlywed couples using an actor-partner interdependence framework. RESULTS: Social anhedonia was negatively associated with own and partner's marital satisfaction. It was also negatively associated with constructive communication and positively associated with destructive communication. Furthermore, cross-sectional mediation analyses showed that communication patterns mediated the social anhedonia-satisfaction link. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, these findings suggest that social anhedonia is likely to lead to lower marital satisfaction, partly through its effect on communication between partners.