Implicit Partner Evaluations and Relationship Outcomes
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IMPLICIT PARTNER EVALUATIONS AND RELATIONSHIP OUTCOMES Negative Speaks Louder than Positive: Negative Implicit Partner Evaluations Forecast Destructive Daily Interaction and Relationship Decline Ezgi Sakman1,2 and Vivian Zayas1 1Department of Psychology, Cornell University 2Department of Psychology, Bilkent University Author Note Ezgi Sakman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5974-6566 Vivian Zayas https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9534-3721 The present research was conducted during Sakman’s post-doctoral research fellowship funded by Fulbright and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. The present research was funded by a grant to Zayas from the Cornell Center for Social Sciences (formerly known as the Institute for the Social Sciences (ISS)). We have no known conflict of interest to disclose. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Vivian Zayas, Cornell University, Department of Psychology, 238 Uris Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-7601 Email: [email protected] Word Count: 9186 IMPLICIT PARTNER EVALUATIONS AND RELATIONSHIP OUTCOMES 1 Abstract Implicit partner evaluations (IPEs)—the evaluations triggered nonconsciously when thinking of one’s partner—have been shown to predict consequential outcomes. Despite the interest, there is a glaring paradox in current approaches. A defining feature of significant other mental representations is their affective complexity; but commonly-used methods assess positive relative to negative IPEs, which do not capture this complexity. Using a longitudinal design, we examined the differential attunement of positive and negative IPEs in forecasting relationship behaviors and outcomes. Time 1 negative IPEs forecasted perceiving and enacting daily negative behaviors assessed in a 14-day daily diary, which, in turn, predicted deterioration in explicit partner and relationship evaluations three months later. Positive IPEs, as well as explicit attitudes, were weak and inconsistent predictors of relationship outcomes. These findings elucidate the differential functions of negative and positive IPEs and demonstrate the importance of independently assessing negative and positive IPEs. Keywords: Implicit Partner Evaluations (IPEs), negative relationship behaviors, explicit partner perceptions, automatic processes, romantic relationships IMPLICIT PARTNER EVALUATIONS AND RELATIONSHIP OUTCOMES 2 Negative Speaks Louder than Positive: Negative Implicit Partner Evaluations Forecast Destructive Daily Interaction and Relationship Decline Poets, novelists, and musicians have long contemplated, and lamented, the bitter sweetness of love. Romantic relationships are a source of rewarding experiences (e.g., safety, joy, comfort). Yet, even the most satisfying relationships are a source of painful events (e.g., disappointment, rejection, frustration). For over a century, psychologists across diverse subfields have theorized that over time these affectively rich experiences slowly become etched in memory and stored as mental representations of significant others (e.g., Bowlby, 1973, 1980, 1982; Erikson, 1956; Fairbairn, 1952; Freud, 1911; Klein, 1955; Mead, 1934; Sullivan, 1953; Winnicott, 1958, 1965; see also, Baldwin, 1992; Linehan, 1993; Pietromonaco & Barrett, 2000; Zayas et al., 2015). Once formed, these representations are expected to have profound and broad effects on social functioning (Happé et al., 2017), serving as a filter through which people perceive and interpret their world, and ultimately, shape their own behaviors in dyadic interactions. Despite renewed interest in the last decade in understanding the structure and function of mental representations, especially aspects that operate at an implicit (nonconscious) level, there has been scant attention to one of their most defining features—their affective complexity. To address this gap, the present work offers the first investigation of the distinct roles of negative and positive implicit partner evaluations (IPEs) on perceiving and enacting negative relationship behaviors, and how IPEs via their persistent effects on daily interactions shape relationship outcomes over time. IPEs are an aspect of mental representations that has received considerable attention in relationship science. In contrast to explicit evaluations, which are assessed IMPLICIT PARTNER EVALUATIONS AND RELATIONSHIP OUTCOMES 3 through direct methods wherein participants report on their feelings and thoughts, IPEs are assessed via indirect methods wherein partner evaluations are inferred, for example, from how quickly and accurately participants perform classification tasks that tap into how concepts are associated with one another (see Fazio & Olson, 2003 for a review). Thus, IPEs are the evaluations that come to mind automatically, effortlessly, unintentionally, and nonconsciously when one thinks of a significant other (see Zayas & Shoda, 2005, see also LeBel & Campbell, 2009). Research has shown that IPEs predict important relationship outcomes. For example, people with stronger positive IPEs report greater emotional commitment, attachment security, and relationship satisfaction (e.g., LeBel & Campbell, 2013; Zayas & Shoda, 2005; see Hicks & McNulty, 2019; Zayas et al., 2017 for reviews). In longitudinal work, stronger positive IPEs assessed at baseline predicted lower likelihood of breaking up 12-months later among those in dating relationships (Lee et al., 2010), and less relationship satisfaction decline two years later among newlyweds (McNulty et al., 2013). In both studies, explicit measures of relationship functioning did not predict future relationship outcomes, attesting to the unique forecasting ability of IPEs. Although this past work highlights the practical, real world importance of assessing IPEs, there is glaring paradox in current approaches. Theory and intuition have long acknowledged that a defining feature of significant other representations is their affective richness, reflecting the rewarding and aversive experiences that characterize close relationships (e.g., Gable & Reis, 2001; Gere et al., 2013; Murray et al., 2006). Still, research on IPEs has largely overlooked this affective complexity. The lack of attention to the affective richness of mental representations does not reflect a lack of appreciation IMPLICIT PARTNER EVALUATIONS AND RELATIONSHIP OUTCOMES 4 for the emotional complexities of relationships. Instead, it reflects common practices and assumptions in the social cognition literature that inform work on IPEs. Specifically, dominant theoretical models conceptualize evaluations on a single continuum, with good on one end, and bad on another. Such conceptualizations are also seen in models of interpersonal evaluation where individuals are judged as trustworthy versus untrustworthy, warm versus cold, and supportive versus rejecting (Abele & Wojciszke, 2007; Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Cuddy et al., 2007; Peeters & Czapinski, 1990). Not surprisingly, then, widely used social cognitive methods for assessing implicit evaluations (e.g., Implicit Association Test, Greenwald et al., 1998) also assess evaluations on a single, unidimensional continuum, from good to bad (for exceptions, see de Liver et al., 2007; study 2; Petty et al., 2006; study 1). The widespread use of unidimensional measures has heavily affected how IPEs are operationalized in relationship science, such that most studies have assessed the extent to which a partner spontaneously activates positive relative to negative evaluations—or net implicit positivity (e.g., Banse, 1999; Faure et al., 2018; Hicks et al., 2016; LeBel & Campbell, 2013, 2013; McNulty et al., 2013, 2017; Murray et al., 2010, 2019; Scinta & Gable, 2007; Zayas & Shoda, 2005). Despite their validity, commonly used measures of IPEs do not assess the extent to which a partner spontaneously activates positive and negative distinctly. But, this methodological constraint has left a theoretical gap in the literature. Partners are a class of stimuli long known to be associated with both rewarding and aversive experiences. Even the most supportive partner is at times not available, and even the happiest of relationships have moments of disappointment and frustration. Yet, commonly used IMPLICIT PARTNER EVALUATIONS AND RELATIONSHIP OUTCOMES 5 unidimensional measures of IPE have not allowed researchers to understand how such affectively-rich experiences are represented at an implicit level, and how affectively complex implicit processes shape relationship functioning and outcomes. The two studies, to date, that have assessed positive and negative IPEs separately have yielded important insights. Providing support for the longstanding idea that a defining characteristic of significant other representations is their affective complexity, Zayas and Shoda (2015) demonstrated that representations of significant others consist of positive and negative implicit evaluations, whereas representations of liked attitude objects consist of only positive implicit evaluations (and inhibit negative implicit evaluations). Importantly, in longitudinal work, Lee and colleagues (2010) showed that weaker positive IPEs and stronger negative IPEs both uniquely predict future break up. Given that most of the work on IPEs has focused on partner’s net implicit positivity, there has been scant attention to how positive and negative IPEs work to shape perception and guide behaviors within relationships, and to ultimately shape relationship outcomes. Here, we examine the proposition that negative IPEs may be particularly diagnostic of perceiving