The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of positive and negative dyadic coing behaviors on marital satisfaction as mediated by psychological flexibility and moderated by gender and having or not having experienced a critical incident during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants included 322 (205 female, 117 male) married adults. We analyzed two mediation models through PROCESS Model 76 (Version 3.4). Results revealed that while there were significant indirect effects both for women and men who experienced a critical incident during the pandemic when using a positive dyadic coping behavioron marital satisfaction via psychological flexibility [β= .017, 95% CI (.002, .034); β= .016, 95% CI (.000, .041), there were significant indirect effects only for women who experienced a critical incident when using negative dyadic coping behavioron marital satisfactionvia psychological flexibility [β= -.053, 95% CI (.117, .008)].

Objectives

• To investigate the effects of positive and negative dyadic coping behaviors on marital satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• To investigate the mediator role of psychological flexibility and moderator roles of gender and having or not having experienced a critical incident in explaining the relationship between dyadic coping and marital satisfaction.
• To demonstrate how dyading coping skills and psychological flexibility predict marital satisfaction during COVID-19 pandemic.

Subject Codes: COVID-19, coping, gender
Population Codes: middle adulthood, heterosexual, Islam, Moslem, Muslim
Method and Approach Codes: mediation/indirect effects models, quantitative methodology,