A new study done by ISU researchers uncovered that wives have more power in the home.

David Vogel, associate professor of psychology, and Megan Murphy, assistant professor of human development and family studies, led the research.

“In society, men have earned more income, but women have power in the home,” Vogel said.

The research team studied 72 married couples from Iowa. All the couples claimed to have a “happy” marriage and none of the couples were in counseling at the time.

“No one had ever done this before, so we didn’t know what to expect,” Murphy said.

Each spouse was asked to independently identify a problem in his or her relationship.

“Most couples talked about financial or household problems,” Murphy said.

The couples were then brought together to discuss the two issues. The research team videotaped the conversations and coded the communication patterns. The researchers were looking at which spouse was more domineering. Vogel said a person is domineering when he or she tries to “one up” the other person.

He found wives were more domineering and the husband would often give in to his wife’s requests.

“We coded the number of one-up attempts and how the spouse responded,” Vogel said. “Wives had more attempts than husbands.”

Murphy said wives would often make a suggestion and husbands would usually respond with: “That sounds OK to me, honey.”

Vogel said he was surprised by some of the results that were found.

“It went against what people had been suggesting,” Vogel said.

All of the couples were studied in 2002. Murphy said it’s a long process to code all of the studied couples. She said it also took a long time to write the report and get it published.

Both Vogel and Murphy said they plan on doing further research on the topic.

The research team also included Ronald Werner-Wilson, associate professor of human development and family studies, Carolyn Cutrona, professor of psychology, and Joann Seeman, graduate student in psychology.

Together, the research team wrote a paper titled “Sex Differences in the Use of Demand and Withdraw Behavior in Marriage: Examining the Social Structure Hypothesis.” The research paper was published in the June issue of Journal of Counseling Psychology, a professional journal published by the American Psychological Association.