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Publication

Understanding Dynamic Interpersonal Emotional Processes in Romantic Relationships

Book - Dissertation

The quality of romantic relationships predicts a variety of health outcomes, ranging from mortality over psychopathology to the speed of wound healing (see e.g., Robles, Slatcher, Trombello, & McGinn, 2014). One key mechanism underlying these associations is the emotions that are experienced in the relationship (Sbarra & Coan, 2018). Romantic partners are thought to influence each other's emotions often, intensely, and in many different ways, and these emotions, in turn, shape the trajectory of the relationship. In this dissertation, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of these interpersonal emotional processes in three different ways. First, we aim to explicitly investigate if and when partners' emotions become interdependent over time, what the underlying mechanisms are, and if this emotional interdependence relates to the couple's functioning (Chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4). Second, we investigate a novel route through which partners may shape each other's emotions over time, namely by means of the perception of each other's emotion (Chapter 5). Third and finally, we examine if and how dynamic aspects of partners' emotions successively predict how they judge their (potential) relationship during defining relational events (Chapter 6 and 7).In Chapter 1, we first offer a structuring framework to capture how partners' emotions can become linked across time. We review existing research on emotional interdependence and its associations with well-being indicators, and speculate about underlying mechanisms. This chapter provides the conceptual basis for the empirical studies conducted in the subsequent chapters. Specifically, in Chapter 2 and 3 we provide a systematic and comprehensive examination of whether and to what extent couples actually show emotional interdependence both in daily life and during lab interactions, using different methods. Additionally, we investigate its stability and moderating factors, and associations with relationship closeness and well-being. To our surprise, the results challenge central notions and definitions in the traditional literature of close relationships. Across methods, types of emotion, timescales or contexts, we find relatively little consistent evidence for the existence of emotional interdependence in partners: the majority of couples in our samples simply does not demonstrate strong signs of emotional interdependence. Further, the couples that demonstrate emotional interdependence, show great differences in their specific interpersonal patterns and are highly unstable, meaning that the degree of observed emotional interdependence does not generalize well across timescales, contexts, or types of emotions. Finally, emotional interdependence is not consistently associated with relationship closeness or well-being. In absence of convincing evidence of direct emotional interdependence, in Chapter 4 we therefore examine whether it is perhaps the perception of emotional interdepence that matters in close relationships. Specifically, we investigate if feeling more emotionally similar to one's partner, and or perceiving oneself to feel more emotionally similar, goes together with increased feelings of closeness to the partner. Supporting the role of perceptions rather than actual experiences, we find that both accurately perceiving and overestimating emotional similarity positively predicts experienced closeness towards a partner. Actual emotional interdependence only predicts closeness through its effect on perception. Chapter 5 further examines the interplay of perceptions and emotions in close relationships, showing indirect ways in which partners might mold each other's emotions over time. Here, we find that how someone thinks their partner feels predicts the partner's actual feelings over time. In Chapter 6 and 7, finally, we investigate how a number of intrapersonal dynamic emotion characteristics during relational events in turn predict how people perceive a romantic partner. Specifically, we report on a speed-dating study that allows us to examine if people's prior emotional states before entering an interaction predict their romantic attraction towards their interaction partner (Chapter 6). We find evidence for contrast effects, meaning that romantic judgments contrast with the emotional states participants are in at the start of a new interaction. Additionally, we examine what aspects of partners' emotional experiences during an important relational event, namely a conflict with their partner, predict how well they recover from the conflict afterwards, in terms of positive and negative feelings towards the partner, and how responsive they perceive their partner to be. In particular, we examine whether the extent of partners' conflict recovery is mainly predicted by their most aversive (negative peak) or pleasant (positive peak) emotional experience during the conflict, or by the emotional tone at the end. The negative and positive peaks, but not the end emotion, predict conflict recovery in individual.
Publication year:2018