Pot use clouds conflict resolution in couples
KC Haydon’s research suggests that cannabis users aren’t as good as they think they are when it comes to dealing with conflicts in their relationships.
Mount Holyoke Associate Professor of Psychology and Education KC Haydon teamed up with Rutgers researcher Jessica Salvatore to assess conflict management in 145 couples where at least one of the partners used cannabis.
Their paper was recently published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
“We found that more frequent cannabis use was associated with discrepancies in their conflict behavior and physiology versus their perceptions of how their relationship is going,” said Haydon.
Despite couples’positive self-assessment, independent observers who were unaware of participants’ cannabis use levels reported cannabis users displayed less effective conflict resolution tactics, said Haydon.
“[P]aradoxically, cannabis users reported high satisfaction with how the conflict went and seemed unaware of the negative relationship dynamics we observed.”