EFFECTIVENESS OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS AND SELF-AWARENESS ON HAPPINESS AND MARITAL CONFLICTS

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1 EFFECTIVENESS OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS AND SELF-AWARENESS ON HAPPINESS AND MARITAL CONFLICTS Mahbubeh Hatami Lotfabadi *1, Hamid Nejat 2 and Hassan Toozandeh Jani 3 Department of Psychology, Khorasan-e-Razavi Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran 2 Department of counseling, Quchan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Quchan, Iran 3 Assistant Professor of psychology, Department of Psychological Sciences, Neyshabur Branch, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran ABSTRACT Current research aimed to investigate effectiveness of effective communication skill and self-awareness skill on amount of happiness and marital conflicts of couples who were in the first five-year period of their lives. This research was semi-experimental. Statistical society included couples in the interval of May 22, 2013 to June 7, 2013 who went to Basij base located in the region 6 of Mashad city to participate family training classes. Selected samples included 24 couples which were randomly located in the three 8-couple groups (two experiment groups and a control group). The research tools were questionnaire of marital conflict (MCQ( and questionnaire of happiness of oxford which were executed over the whole three groups. Then two experimental groups were trained separately through 10 sessions and finally all three groups were evaluated. Findings showed that training effective communication skills was effective on increasing happiness and decreasing marital conflicts (p<005). Furthermore training self-awareness skills was also effective on increasing happiness and decreasing marital conflicts (p<0.05). KEYWORDS: effective communication skills, self-awareness skills, happiness, marital conflicts. INTRODUCTION Family is basis of society and primary part of community. As family consists of two members of man and woman or more than it, families and their developments make the society come into existence. Thus in order to achieve a healthy, favorable and successful society, it is necessary to have healthy, competent and thriving families. Accompanied by converting homes to dormitories and reduction of intimate relations between family members, training specific skills are required. Such condition of life necessitates specific skills which can present correct form of living which means healthy and happy life accompanied by peace, thriving and efficiency. One of the preliminary skills is competency to making effective communication. Life of human being is impossible without effective communication with others. Human beings communicate with other people from the birth and way of communicating with others plays a significant role in addressing or causing problems. Many of problems are caused due to lack of effective communication. Many of conflicts, quarrelling and etc. are caused due to lack of communicative skills. Competency to make and keep friendly relationships affects individual and social mental health significantly. In this regard, keeping intimate and favorable relationship with family members accompanied by responsibility is considered as the beginning point of this skill, since family supports human being in the all positions. Investigations have shown that the more emotional and verbal relations between family members are, the relationship between members of that family is healthier, happier and stronger. In spite of emotional and sexual attractions, beginning of marital life is accompanied by emergence of conflicts in the different fields gradually. Couples failure to address marital conflicts is caused by numerous factors but clinical experiences of consulting couples indicate that these failures stem from naïve couples or their weak skills in keeping and fostering the love which exists at the beginning. More the human being is successful in communication and social compatibility and interactions he would achieve the highest rank that he deserves it. Gutman (1976) believes that spouses with marital conflicts have some deficiencies in the field of social and communicative skills and they are involved in useless communicative patterns. Furthermore German and Niskery (1978) believe that communicative factors and lack of appropriate social and communicative skills is the main reason of many marital conflicts. In their opinion, these conflicts can be removed by communicative treatments and training social and communicative skills. Both of couples and doctors believe that the most common and destructive problems in failed marriages are communication problems. Volume- 4 Issue- 2 (2015) ISSN: (p); (e) 2015 DAMA International. All rights reserved. 211

2 Self-awareness is the ability to recognize oneself and one s characteristics, strengths and weakness points, needs, fears and disgust. Self-awareness growth contributes individuals to find out whether he is under stress and this usually is the necessary condition for effective and intimate social communication. Self-awareness skill contributes human being to recognize his feelings and control them. Trying to achieve self-awareness is of importance from two points of view, one from the perspective of the person and another from the perspective of society; it means that when an individual is familiar with his internal world and recognizes himself and addresses his inside contradictions and provides a condition of using his hidden talents, he contributes his personality to flourish, as a result he can improve (even though it is partial) human communications in the society as a perfect person who possess the sense of understanding in the society. Conflict is a quarrel about values and claims in order to achieve positions, powers and resources which harm, destroy and omit other side. Conflict in marital life occurs when spouses are not able to satisfy emotional needs of each other in order to provide safety, security and satisfaction; in the other word turbulent marital relationship indicates couple s failure in providing an appropriate relationship. Unreasonable contradiction should be avoided and controlled. Although eradicating conflicts is impossible, there are methods to prevent and control conflicts. One of these methods is reflective listening in effective communication subject. As we know, human being should have a true understanding of himself and his feelings in order to get on well with others. Having a pleasant feeling towards oneself, feeling of being worthy and lovely are among components of happiness in the life. Happiness is a multi dimension structure which compares elements of emotion with elements of recognition. It contains three main dimensions, positive excitement, satisfaction with life, and lack of negative feelings such as depression and anxiety. Carl Erikson (2003) considers happiness as the final purpose of the life and believes that real happiness necessitates worthy and meaningful life. In the theories so called final purpose, it is believed that subjective happiness is obtained when individuals cover their purposes based on values and needs of the society. Happiness excites individual s activity and facilitates social relationship and increases lifespan of individuals. Text or main body of articles Plan of current research was semi experimental. Statistical society included couples who were in the first five-year period of their lives and were located in the region 6 of Mashad city. After public call, 24 couples from two Basij bases were registered; 24 couples were selected randomly and were divided into three groups, each group consisted of 8 couples (two experiment group and one control group). The main tools in this research were marital conflicts questionnaire and Oxford happiness questionnaire. questionnaire, firstly, was provided by Baraty and Sanaei. It consisted of 42 questions and included 7 dimensions of marital conflicts. Its minimum score was 42 and its maximum score was 270. The reliability of components of this questionnaire was between 31 and 82 percent and total reliability was reported as 81%. Oxford happiness questionnaire was provided by Argil et al. This questionnaire included multi-choices 29 articles. Its choices were scored from 0 to 3 respectively and score of each test was between 0 and 87. This questionnaire was normalized by the Abedy et al. over 727 individuals of students of Isfahan Universities who were selected by the stratified random sampling. Average and standard deviation was 44.4 and 13.3 respectively. At first a briefing session was performed in order to determine interest in participating the group and commitment to present all workshop sessions. Individual who were less willing to participate the plan were located in the control group and interested individuals were located in the two experiment groups. Each group consisted of 8 couples. At first all the three groups were tested, then two experiment groups were separately trained in the minute sessions by the effective communication skills and self-awareness skills; control group didn t receive any training. After the course, all three groups were tested again and hypotheses were investigated. The program of training sessions was as follow: (self-awareness skill) first session: welcoming, introduction, explaining rules of the group, emphasis on doing homework per session- explaining education goals- overall introduction of life skills. Second session: defining selfawareness- explaining importance of self-awareness in having satisfactory relation with oneself, friends and spouseindicating characteristics of a healthy character and explaining a healthy character by the group members. Third session: making group members aware of positive and negative traits of one, recognizing potential abilities and skills. Fourth session: group members conversation and particularly between couples two by two about their characteristics, recognizing some changeable traits in oneself, fifth session: members conversation about one s feelings, values, perspectives and tendencies- indicating members feeling when thinking about positive and negative traits of oneself and offering them to the spouse. Sixth session: discussing and evaluating subjects of previous sessions by the group Volume- 4 Issue- 2 (2015) ISSN: (p); (e) 2015 DAMA International. All rights reserved. 212

3 members. Seventh session: performing a physical activity in front of group members and indicating that when performing it, what point and subject do they think about- conversing about problems and pressures that the members face and giving comments about it. Eighth session: familiarity of group members especially spouses with each others opinions, group discussion about effectiveness of self-awareness in making relationship with others especially in marital life. Ninth session: giving examples and investigating positions in the mutual life of spouses which are destroyed or eased due to having or not having self-awareness. Tenth session: reviewing and summarizing previous sessions, evaluating effects of offered methods in relation with oneself and social life. (Effective communication skill) first session: welcoming-introduction-explaining rules of the group-emphasis on doing homework per session- explaining purposes of training effective communication skills- overall introduction of life skills. Second session: recognizing components of communication- explaining how communicating affects our feelings and relations with others especially with the spouses- recognizing obstacles and facilities in the way of a good communication. Third session: what is the communication and what makes it effective- emphasis on the problem in marital communication caused by ineffective communication- determining concept of the message- exemplification and discussion. Fourth session: recognizing positive and negative methods- communication and offering a list of effective communicative ways between spouses including proper listening, repeating what the other side says, and expressing feelings using the pronoun I, choosing the suitable time for conversation. Fifth session: explaining nonverbal communication (body language) and how to use it- trying to find out others feelings- practice of expressing feelings and thoughts by the means of pronoun I - understanding importance of offering clear and precise messages. Sixth session: practicing to determine non-verbal communication in the level of feeling and behavior- evaluating amount of certainty (practice of definite behavior by the group members) - playing the role of expressing feeling in situations, rejecting without sense of guilt. Seventh session: offering solutions which enhance a relationship and obstacles which destruct the relationship (during the relationships which are occurred for the group members). Eighth session: explaining active listening technique (paying attention to the other individuals, questioning, reacting, summarizing) - explaining the technique of feeling reflection (bouncing a summary of feelings and excitements of other side and paying attention to them). Ninth session: discussing marital communication and speaking about respectresponsibility, understanding, regarding. Tenth session: reviewing and summarizing previous sessions, evaluating and effects of offered methods in the relation between spouses. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION In this research, multivariate covariance analysis (MANOCOVA) method was used in order to analyze data. In this regard pre hypotheses of parametric tests were measured by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Levine test which indicated that scores of dependant variables are normal and variances are equal in the both groups (p<0.05). Analysis results of MANOCOVA are offered in the tables 2&3. Table 1. Average and standard deviation of scores of pre-test and post-test for each group individually Standard deviation of post-test Average of posttest Standard deviation of pre-test Average of pre-test Variables quantity grou p Happiness Happiness Happiness Volume- 4 Issue- 2 (2015) ISSN: (p); (e) 2015 DAMA International. All rights reserved. 213

4 Table 2.Covariance analysis results of post-test scores of happiness and marital conflicts after training effective communication skill Sig F Variables Happiness Table 3- Covariance analysis results of post-test scores of happiness and marital conflicts after training self-awareness skill Sig F Variables Happiness As it is seen in the table 2&3, findings indicate that there is a significant difference between groups in the terms of effect of training effective communication skill on happiness (F=973.3, P=0.000) and on marital conflicts (F=168.2, P=0.000). Furthermore there is a significant difference between groups in the terms of effect of training self-awareness skill on happiness (F=184.4, P=0.000) and on marital conflicts (F=146.8, P=0.000). CONCLUSION The main purpose of this research is to investigate effectiveness of effective communication skills and self-awareness skills on happiness and marital conflicts of couples who were in the first five-year period of their lives. Findings of the research indicate that training effective communication and self-awareness decreases conflicts and increases happiness of couples. Following performed researches confirm the obtained results. Agha Mohammadian (2004) in a research showed that training life skills improves social and communicative skills positively as one of the important dimensions of family performance. Furthermore Abolghasemy et al (2010) in a study over 45 individuals of girl students in the second year of the primary school realized that training problem solving skill and communicative skill which is aimed to enrich behavioral habits of students contribute to their happiness and self-esteem. Yalsin (2007) also in their researches showed that training communication skills increases compatibility, marital relationships, and expression of love by the couples. Green and Fakltr (2005) in a research concluded that communicative factors and lack of suitable social and communicative skills is the main reason of many marital conflicts. Generally, numerous evidences indicate that couples in the contemporary societies face many problems such as deficiency in social skills in order to make and keep intimate and friendly relations with each other. Nowadays, disaster of marital conflicts is one of the main reasons for referral of individuals to the mental health centers. The high rate of divorce in the recent decades indicates existence of serious conflicts in the relationships of couples. There is no doubt that divorce has different causes such as economic, cultural, social, individual and factors. But what has drawn attention of researches to itself is individuality aspect of the issue and in the kind of social skills. It seems that when individuals enter the new world of marriage, each side needs a set of new social skills so that they could respect their demands and their individual environment in addition to respecting personal world of other side. Few communication skills accompanied by turbulent relationships and disability to address conflict causes that unsolved conflicts lead to negative expectations from each other and decrease the possibility of addressing problems in the couples relationships and increases complicity and anxiety. As it was mentioned, recognizing thoughts, excitements, feelings and weaknesses and reacting appropriately in the different situations of life affect making communication with others dramatically. By the means of training life skills, we can contribute couples to become aware of mistakes in their interactions and improve their communications; as a result conflicts between them are reduced and they become more satisfied with the life. Usually young spouses due to wrong understanding of spouse s and others behavior don t have a good feeling towards oneself and life. This research and similar researches show that increasing communication skills and self-awareness skills is effective on reducing conflicts and increasing happiness of them. Volume- 4 Issue- 2 (2015) ISSN: (p); (e) 2015 DAMA International. All rights reserved. 214

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