Implicit Partner Evaluations: How They Form and Affect Close Relationships

For decades, research on couples has attempted to understand the source of relationship decay by explicitly asking people how they evaluate their relationships. Ironically, however, relationship science also indicates that people seem largely indisposed to acknowledge some aspects of their relationships in self-report questionnaires, particularly when those are undesirable. To circumvent these limitations, a growing body of work has started to employ more indirect measurement tools (the so-called ‘implicit measures’) to capture people’s spontaneous evaluative associations, or gut-feeling reactions, toward their partner: their implicit partner evaluations. Recent evidence suggests that implicit partner evaluations, as assessed by implicit measures, differ quite sharply from self-reported explicit evaluations and predict later relationship quality and stability, even when explicit evaluations do not. To date, however, little is known about the sources of implicit partner evaluations and the reasons why they have such powerful predictive power. The present dissertation contributes to this growing field of research in many ways by examining how implicit partner evaluations form and affect close relationships in everyday life. First, using a combination of longitudinal and observational methods, Chapter 2 provides evidence that, compared to their explicit counterparts, implicit partner evaluations remain more stable over time, are more resistant to day-to-day relationship experiences, and update gradually as relationship experiences accumulate in time. Second, Chapters 3 and 4 capitalize on diary and experimental designs to show that one of the reasons why implicit partner implicit partner evaluations have important implications for relationship maintenance is because, under specific yet prevalent conditions (i.e., when opportunities to deliberate are limited), they determine daily behaviors that are critical for long-term relational well-being, such as nonverbal communication in problem-solving conversations and forgiveness toward the partner’s offense. Third, drawing on a large dyadic sample of newlyweds, Chapter 5 further extends these findings by showing that having ambivalent implicit partner evaluations can also affect relationship functioning over time by motivating spouses to make behavioral efforts that may improve their marital problems. Last, Chapter 6 describes how studying implicit evaluations in close relationship contexts can also invigorate basic implicit social cognition research on how attitudes change and affect behavior in the real world, and inform interventions for society. Taken together, the findings from the present dissertation provide novel insights about the key role of implicit partner evaluations in relational contexts, and further illustrate the scientific and practical value of integrating research in relationship science and implicit social cognition

Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies

Given the powerful implications of relationship quality for health and well-being, a central mission of relationship science is explaining why some romantic relationships thrive more than others. This large-scale project used machine learning (i.e., Random Forests) to 1) quantify the extent to which relationship quality is predictable and 2) identify which constructs reliably predict relationship quality. Across 43 dyadic longitudinal datasets from 29 laboratories, the top relationship-specific predictors of relationship quality were perceived-partner commitment, appreciation, sexual satisfaction, perceived-partner satisfaction, and conflict. The top individual-difference predictors were life satisfaction, negative affect, depression, attachment avoidance, and attachment anxiety. Overall, relationship-specific variables predicted up to 45% of variance at baseline, and up to 18% of variance at the end of each study. Individual differences also performed well (21% and 12%, respectively). Actor-reported variables (i.e., own relationship-specific and individual-difference variables) predicted two to four times more variance than partner-reported variables (i.e., the partner’s ratings on those variables). Importantly, individual differences and partner reports had no predictive effects beyond actor-reported relationship-specific variables alone. These findings imply that the sum of all individual differences and partner experiences exert their influence on relationship quality via a person’s own relationship-specific experiences, and effects due to moderation by individual differences and moderation by partner-reports may be quite small. Finally, relationship-quality change (i.e., increases or decreases in relationship quality over the course of a study) was largely unpredictable from any combination of self-report variables. This collective effort should guide future models of relationships

Speech is Silver, Nonverbal Behavior is Gold: How Implicit Partner Evaluations Affect Dyadic Interactions in Close Relationships

This is a research project on implicit partner evaluations and nonverbal behavior in dyadic interactions (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797618785899

Speech Is Silver, Nonverbal Behavior Is Gold: How Implicit Partner Evaluations Affect Dyadic Interactions in Close Relationships

Growing evidence suggests that the seeds of relationship decay can be detected via implicit partner evaluations even when explicit evaluations fail to do so. However, little is known about the concrete daily relational processes that explain why these gut feelings are such important determinants of relationships' long-term outcomes. The present integrative multimethod research yielded a novel finding: that participants with more positive implicit partner evaluations exhibited more constructive nonverbal (but not verbal) behavior toward their partner in a videotaped dyadic interaction. In turn, this behavior was associated with greater satisfaction with the conversation and with the relationship in the following 8-day diary portion of the study. These findings represent a significant step forward in understanding the crucial role of automatic processes in romantic relationships. Together, they provide novel evidence that relationship success appears to be highly dependent on how people spontaneously behave in their relationship, which may be ultimately rooted in their implicit partner evaluations

How do implicit and explicit partner evaluations update in daily life? Evidence from the lab and the field

Evidence suggesting that implicit partner evaluations (IPEs), but not explicit evaluations (EPEs), can predict later changes in satisfaction and relationship status has led researchers to postulate that IPEs must be especially sensitive to relational reward and costs. However, supporting evidence for this assumption remains scarce, and very little is known regarding how IPEs versus EPEs actually update in everyday life. Two studies (one in-lab dyadic interaction study, N = 255, and one 14-day dyadic diary study, N = 348) investigated updating in IPEs and EPEs in the context of real-life relationship experiences. Study 1 revealed that the level of positive and negative experiences that a couple encountered while discussing a divergence of interests in their relationship predicted pre-to-post changes in EPEs, but not in IPEs. Study 2 revealed that IPEs showed less sensitivity to everyday relationship experiences across multiple metrics over the course of 14 days. Specifically, compared with EPEs, IPEs fluctuated less at the within- (vs. between-) person level, showed less-abrupt changes from day-to-day, and had a substantially weaker relationship with same-day positive and negative experiences. Rather than covarying with same-day experiences, IPEs appeared sensitive to relationship experiences aggregated across multiple prior days as well as to highly diagnostic relationship experiences, such as breakup. Consistent with recent advances in social-cognitive research, these findings support a modified account of IPE sensitivity, according to which IPEs show only gradual shifts under everyday circumstances, but more-dramatic shifts under highly diagnostic circumstances. Implications of these findings for close relationships and implicit social cognition research are discussed