Respostas assertivas e autorregras de mulheres entre 31 e 49 anos em relacionamentos afetivos amorosos

Abstract

The present study’s objectives were: a) to identify in which situations heterosexual women, aged 31 to 49 years old, show difficulty in emitting behaviors of making requests, denying requests, dealing with criticism, expressing discontent and asking their amorous partners for behavioral changes; b) to identify self-rules associated with these difficulties; c) to describe the frequency with which the women present self-accounts indicating assertiveness; d) to test whether or not there is a statistically significative association between assertiveness and sociodemographic variables. For this, 135 women that were in a heterosexual relationship for over two years, with complete or incomplete tertiary education, and residing in the metropolitan region of Belém-PA, answered a sociodemographic questionnaire, an assertiveness questionnaire and an Assertive Skills Inventory (IHS). Results showed that most women obtained a good or median score in assertive skills and that the work variable (whether the woman works or not), the job she does and her personal income had significative association with assertiveness. Also, it was possible to observe that difficulties involving dealing with criticism from their partners had the greatest rate of occurrence, and situations involving denying requests, occurred in smaller frequency even though, in a general sense, all target behaviors in the study showed a significative frequency of hindering situations for their emission. It was also observed that the difficulty of emitting assertive behaviors investigated was frequently related to financial situations and domestics tasks. And the most cited reason for not emitting assertive behaviors was conflict avoidance, indicating that there are aversive contingencies involved. Results show innovative implications for the areas of social skills and women’s assertive behaviors.