Wow! The title refers to "Dividend Investors" and the article discusses REITs. REITs are much more sensitive to changes in interest rates than are the much broader dividend-growth stocks. REITs are closer to fixed income investments in that tend to raise their distributions relatively slowly (maybe by 3% per year or so) where true dividend-growers will raise their dividends by two to three times that rate. A typical REIT's distribution might double every 24 years or so while a solid dividend-grower's dividend will double in seven to 10 years. Thus the true dividend-grower's share price, because of that much higher rate of increase in its dividend, will typically hold up much bettr in a rising interest rate environment. 
Some factual information:

https://www.clearbridge.com/perspectives/institutional/2016/dividend-strategy-rates.html

 Three years after the Fed first hikes the federal funds rate, dividend growers have outperform dividend nonpayers by over 17 percentage points. N. Davis