Predicting Marital Satisfaction on the Basis of Attachment Styles and Differentiation of Self

The purpose of this research was to study the association between adult attachment styles and self differentia-tion with marital satisfaction. Using cluster sampling, 209 married students (110 male & 99 female) of Tehran Un-iversity were randomly selected. The data were collected using three Que-stionnaires: The adult attachment style scale (Colins & Read 1990), differe-ntiation of self inventory (Skowron & Smith, 2003), and Enrich marital satis-faction scale. Pearson correlation coefficient, t-test, analysis of variance and hierarchical regression analysis (stepwise) were applied to analyze the data. Results indicated that students who had secure attachment style, were significantly higher on marital satisfaction than tho-se with avoidant and anxious styles. It was found that there is a positive sig-nificant correlation between self diff-erentiation and marital satisfaction and there was no difference between men and women on self differentiation but men had a higher marital satisfaction than women. It was also observed that more secure attachment is associated with higher self differentiation. In ad-dition, results showed that I- position, emotional cutoff, emotional reaction, dependency and gender variables are the best predictors of marital satisfa-ction accounting for 52.7% of va-riance. The research emphasizes on the importance of experiences at origi-nal family in shaping the subsequent intimate relationships and marital sat-isfaction.