Marriage in a divided world: Spousal political dissimilarities and marital conflict in Hong Kong

Amid escalating global affective polarization, this study examines the ramifications of within-couple political dissimilarities for marital relationships using representative dyadic data from Hong Kong (N = 1003 married couples)—the first such examination in a non-democratic, rapidly polarizing context. Drawing on value incongruence theory and the affective polarization literature, the study proposes three sets of hypotheses regarding the roles of spousal political identity and value dissimilarities in the frequency, scope, and intensity of marital conflict, as well as the moderating role of affective polarization. Regression analyses show that political identity dissimilarity is a robust and independent predictor of more frequent marital conflicts over political matters and relationship issues. Notably, identity dissimilarity is associated with a higher likelihood of spousal psychological aggression even after controlling for value dissimilarities and conflict frequencies, indicating that identity-based antagonism is not reducible to simply more frequent and broader disagreement. Affective polarization strengthens the associations between political identity dissimilarity and conflicts over non-political domains. Consequently, politically misaligned couples experience both more frequent conflicts across multiple domains and more intense conflicts, manifested as psychological aggression. Value dissimilarities, by contrast, exhibit weaker and less consistent links to conflict frequency and intensity. These results demonstrate that identity-based antagonism—amplified by the moralization of political orientations—drives marital strain beyond substantive policy or value disagreements.