Financial worries are already well-known as one of the main sources of conflict in a romantic relationship.
But now a new study reveals that people who base their self worth on how much they earn clash with their partner more often.
The team of researchers, based in Michigan and Texas, recruited hundreds of people in a marriage or in a committed relationship.
They found a link between conflict, such as arguments, and ‘financially contingent self-worth’ (FCSW) – the feeling that personal worth depends on the ability to achieve financial success.
Amazingly, this link was found regardless of how much money they were earning or their level of economic stress.
Although the experts couldn’t explain the link, it’s likely that someone who’s paying more attention to their finances is neglecting the various needs of their partner, causing conflict.
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People in relationships who base their self worth on how much they earn clash with their partner more often, researchers in Michigan and Texas found (file photo)
The study was led by Deborah E. Ward, an assistant professor of psychology at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan.
‘It’s not the case that liking, valuing, or wanting to have money and/or financial success is a bad thing,’ Professor Ward told PsyPost.
‘It’s when a person views financial success as a core component of what makes them a good or worthwhile person that can open them up to vulnerabilities.’
The researchers initially recruited 434 participants, who were in a committed relationship, either married or otherwise long-term. They were assessed for their levels of FCSW and how often they had had disagreements with their partner.
Participants who reported higher levels of FCSW reported more frequent financial conflicts with their partners, the experts found.
Interestingly, these conflicts in turn were linked with lower levels of relationship satisfaction, and this link remained statistically significant even after controlling for income, economic pressures and materialism.
Seventy-four of the 434 participants also completed a six-week diary study, which required them to complete a relationship questionnaire each week.
During weeks when participants reported higher feelings of FCSW, they also had more financial disagreements with their partner and reported feeling less supported by their partner, the diary logs showed.
In a follow-up experiment, researchers recruited another 337 people who had their FCSW levels craftily manipulated.
These participants were either assigned to one of two conditions – they had to read a news article proclaiming the benefits of financial success or another article about how financial success doesn’t affect quality of life.
Unsurprisingly, those in the first condition reported higher FCSW compared to those who read the other article.
They also displayed more hostile responses to hypothetical financial scenarios involving their partner, and reported lower relationship satisfaction and perceived support from their partner.
This shows that merely planting a seed in someone’s mind that financial success is important makes them reevaluate how supportive their partner is.
People with high FCSW will have feelings of personal worth and value that depend on one’s ability to achieve financial success (stock image)
Professor Ward pointed out that the study is correlational, so her team could not definitively say that having FCSW causes people to have more financial conflicts with their partners.
‘For example, it could instead be that having more financial conflicts leads people to believe that having more money would improve their relationship problems, which could increase their tendency to base self-worth on money,’ she told PsyPost.
‘What we can say is that we see a consistent association between having financially contingent self-worth and perceiving greater financial-related conflicts in one’s relationship.’
The study has been published in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk