Do I Like You? Effects of Daily Negative Events and Implicit Self-Esteem on Daily Implicit Partner Regard

The current study examines explicit and implicit self-esteem as moderators of the daily association between negative events and implicit partner regard among cohabitating African American couples ( N = 360). In a 21-day diary study, individuals with low (vs. high) implicit self-esteem showed a negative association between negative non-relationship and non-interpersonal events and implicit partner regard that day. Age was also a significant moderator such that, only among older participants, low implicit self-esteem individuals reported lower implicit partner regard on days with higher levels of negative relationship, non-relationship, and non-interpersonal events. Findings highlight the importance of implicit partner regard in the risk regulation system and underscore the importance of high implicit self-esteem as a protective factor for relationship functioning among African American couples.

The Case for Studying Implicit Social Cognition in Close Relationships

This review offers close relationships as a fruitful avenue to address long-lasting questions and current controversies in implicit social cognition research. Close relationships provide a unique opportunity to study strong attitudes that are formed and updated through ongoing contact with significant others and appear to have important downstream consequences. Therefore, close relationship contexts enable researchers to apply fine-grained, dyadic, longitudinal methodologies to provide unique insights regarding whether and how automatic attitudes relate to personal experience, change meaningfully and reliably over time, and predict consequential judgments and behaviors. Further, given that close relationships are critical to people's well-being and health, applying implicit social cognition theories to close relationships may also offer practical benefits regarding real-world issues related to relationship decay. In this regard, we provide guidance for future research by highlighting how continuing to refine our understanding of implicit social cognition in close relationships can inform interventions and reliably benefit society

The Predictive Validity of Explicit and Implicit Partner Evaluations for Relationship Behaviors: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Analysis

This research introduced novel measures of explicit and implicit romantic partner evaluations and tested whether these measures predict video-observed relationship behaviors. One hundred and eighty heterosexual participants (90 couples) completed 2 measures of explicit partner evaluations, the Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS) and a short form of the Trier Partnership Inventory (TPI-S). Participants also completed measures of implicit partner evaluations, namely 2 variants of an affective priming task (APT), one of them focusing on reaction times (RT-APT) and the other one focusing on errors (EB-APT), and a facial electromyography (fEMG) task. Relationship behaviors were video-recorded in the laboratory and coded by a total of 34 independent observers. Actor-partner interdependence models were used to test whether partner evaluations predicted participants' own relationship behaviors (actor effects), and the behaviors of the partner (partner effects). Furthermore, we examined how explicit and implicit partner evaluations are related to the behaviors of the couple as a whole. Relationship behaviors were indeed predicted on all 3 levels by the RAS, the TPI-S, the EB-APT, and the fEMG, but not by the RT-APT. The research thus provides researchers with novel tools to assess explicit and implicit partner evaluations that are linked to relationship behaviors.

The Unbearable Automaticity of Being . . . in a Close Relationship

A recent surge in research on automatic processes in close relationships has revealed new insights into how people form and update relationship evaluations as well as the implications of these evaluations for their relationship outcomes. We begin by summarizing this research within the framework of interdependence theory—the predominant theory of how people evaluate and make decisions about their close relationships. In doing so, we review evidence that implicitly assessed automatic partner attitudes reflect pleasant and unpleasant experiences involving the partner and predict subsequent relationship outcomes, sometimes better than more deliberative judgments. Next, we describe several dual-process perspectives that suggest how and when these attitudes shape such outcomes, and we conclude by highlighting the potential benefits of examining automatic partner attitudes for theories of relationship science and beyond.

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.

Inhibiting Self-Protection in Romantic Relationships

A daily diary study of married couples tested the hypothesis that automatic partner attitudes regulate self-protection for low, but not high, self-esteem people. For 14 days both partners reported trust in the other’s caring and perceived and actual rejecting and selfish behavior. On days after low self-esteem people reported less trust in their partner’s caring, those with more positive automatic partner attitudes perceived their partner to be less rejecting and selfish. They also engaged in less rejecting and selfish behavior toward their partner and their partner engaged in less selfish and rejecting behavior toward them. The current findings present the first evidence that automatic partner attitudes may help low self-esteem people inhibit the rejection sensitivity and distancing behaviors that too often undermine their relationships.