Accommodating Complexity: Adapting Accommodation Theory to Capture Responses to Specific Transgressions

Sooner or later, we are all going to be hurt by the ones we love. Though we cannot wholly prevent such transgressions from occurring, we may be able to control how we respond, and those responses can help determine the outcome of the transgression, for good or ill. One of the most prominent models for understanding how individuals respond to transgression has been Rusbult’s EVLN model, a two-dimensional typology with four categories: Exit, Voice, Loyalty and Neglect. Despite its usefulness, this typology is limited in important ways, which prompted me to re-examine and re-calibrate the EVLN. In this dissertation, I present two studies designed to describe how individuals can respond to specific transgressions from a romantic partner (rather than responses to relationship dissatisfaction, as the EVLN was initially designed to do). In these studies, I asked undergraduate participants to list how they would respond to several hypothetical transgressions (Study 1, Phase 1; N = 107) or community participants how they actually responded to recalled transgression from a romantic partner (Study 2, Phase 1; N = 39). I then had undergraduates generate various ratings of those responses (Study 1, Phases 2 and 3; N = 150 and 195 respectively; Study 2, Phase 2, N = 197) and used multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) techniques to assess how transgression-related responses should be organized and categorized. The result is an eight-fold typology summarized by the acronym CARE-CAMP. This typology differs from the EVLN in that it provides alternate dimensions (“avoidant” and “retaliatory”) and unique categories (e.g., “Cold-Shoulder” and “Moratorium”) that add theoretically important nuance to our understanding of accommodation in close relationships

Trait mindfulness as a protective factor in connections between psychological issues and facebook addiction among Turkish University students

Eskisu, Mustafa/0000-0002-7992-653XWOS:000580512400003Facebook addiction is a growing issue that has increasingly attracted the attention of clinicians and researchers in a variety of countries and cultures. Relying on the Cognitive-Behavioral Model for Pathological Internet Use, and in a sample of Turkish undergraduates, we investigate whether mindfulness might account for how self-esteem and psychological problems (depression, anxiety, and stress) connect to Facebook addiction. A total of 298 college students completed measures of Facebook addiction, self-esteem, mindfulness and psychological problems, which we analyzed using path analysis, testing various models of how Facebook addiction might be predicted by these factors. We found that Facebook addiction was positively associated with psychological problems and negatively associated with self-esteem and mindfulness, with mindfulness fully accounting for the association between psychological problems, self-esteem and Facebook addiction. These results support the role of mindfulness in the prevention of Facebook addiction and the treatment of addicted individuals. This study also helps clarify previous research connecting mindfulness to Internet addiction, and extends those findings cross-culturally to a Turkish context