Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

BACKGROUND: Although cystic fibrosis (CF) is a progressive, life-limiting, genetic disease, recent advances have extended survival, allowing persons with CF the time and physical and mental health to form romantic relationships. Previous studies have shown the importance of dyadic coping to positive psychosocial functioning and relationship satisfaction for people with serious chronic illness and their romantic partners, but little work has been done with persons with CF and their partners...

Women and racially minoritized college students report frequent experiences of being targets of gender and race-based microaggressions in the classroom context. However, while much research has focused on reports of experiences by targets, less is known about how observers would evaluate and make sense of these microaggressive experiences. Thus the present study used vignettes based on real-life situations to ascertain how 272 college students (76% White, 52% ciswomen) in the United States interpreted gender-based and intersectional microaggressions occurring in the classroom...

Friendships are a primary source of social support during young adulthood; however, little is known about the factors associated with young adults feeling greater support during interactions with friends. We examined how micro-level verbal responses and macro-level judgments of friendship quality were associated with perceptions of support following an interaction between friends. Same-gender friend dyads ( N = 132; 66.2% female; 18-24 years, M age = 19.63) took turns speaking about a problem, then participants rated their perceptions of support given and received following the task...

Both parental psychological well-being (e.g., depressive symptoms) and parental relationship functioning (e.g., negative communication) are common parental risk factors for dysfunctional parenting. The spillover process from these parental characteristics to dysfunctional parenting is assumed to be amplified by parental stress, which is particularly common among mothers and fathers of young children. However, few studies have examined dyadic spillover processes from parental risk factors and parental stress on parenting in early childhood...

Conflicts about money and finances can be destructive for both the quality and longevity of relationships. This paper reports on a descriptive analysis of the contents of financial conflicts in two samples. Study 1 examined severe financial conflicts in social media posts ( N = 1014) from reddit ( r/relationships ). Eight themes were identified via thematic analysis: "unfair relative contributions" "who pays for joint expenses", "job and income", "exceptional expenses", "terms of financial arrangements", "discrepant financial values", "one-sided financial decisions", and "perceived irresponsibility"...

Social interactions today expand beyond in-person interactions. Therefore, it is important to recognize that social interactions can occur with social network members across multiple communication modes (in-person, phone, and online). The current study explored the role that social support plays in the relationship between mode frequency (in-person, phone, and online), network communication mode diversity (breadth and evenness of communicating with network members via different communication modes), and well-being (positive affect, stress, and loneliness) from the 3-year UCNET (UC Berkley Social Networks Study, N = 1159) dataset...

Relational boredom is an important cognitive-emotional experience that is understudied in the relationship maintenance literature. In three dyadic studies, we investigated accuracy and bias in partners' perceptions of each other's relational boredom, and how accurate and biased boredom perceptions were associated with relationship quality. Results revealed that, overall, partners tended to overestimate-but accurately track-each other's relational boredom across the features that comprise relational boredom and across time...

Individuals who perceive greater support or approval for their relationships from friends and family also report greater relationship stability and commitment and better mental and physical health (known as the "social network effect"). These associations have been explained, in part, through three cognitive-affective processes: uncertainty reduction, cognitive balance, and dyadic identity formation. However, we know less about cognitive- behavioral mechanisms that might help explain the social network effect...

With the onset of COVID-19, governments around much of the world implemented strict social distancing and stay-at-home orders that profoundly affected the amount of time many couples were spending together. In the present research, we examined whether perceptions of a change in time spent with a partner were associated with stress, and whether stress levels in turn predicted relationship commitment and satisfaction, both in the short term (Time 1) and longer term (Time 2; i.e., after 10 months). Results indicated partial mediation, such that less (vs...

For emerging adults, high-quality friendships can be an important source of companionship and support. The most commonly studied negative interaction between friends is conflict, yet work with youth suggests more serious victimization also occurs in friendship. In the current study, we developed and obtained preliminary psychometric evidence for the Friendship Victimization Scale, a measure that assesses physical, sexual, relational, and verbal forms of victimization in the friendships of emerging adults, as well as coercive and controlling behaviors...

Background: Intimate partner relationships foster individuals' well-being throughout the lifespan. However, dissatisfying or conflict-laden relationships can have a detrimental impact on well-being and relationship quality. The majority of older adults live together with a spouse/partner, and intimate relationships are one of the most important social contexts in their daily lives. Purpose: Expanding on previous research, we examined the role of previous conflict on experiences of loneliness and affect in the daily lives of older partners from a dyadic perspective...

Relationship and sexual satisfaction are two central outcomes in the study of relationships and are commonly used in both academia and applied practice. However, relationship and sexual satisfaction measures infrequently undergo specific psychometric investigation. Ensuring that measures display strong psychometric performance is an important but under-tested element of replication that has come under more scrutiny lately, and adequate measurement of constructs is an important auxiliary assumption underpinning theory-testing empirical work...

The COVID-19 pandemic created a range of stressors, among them difficulties related to work conditions, financial changes, lack of childcare, and confinement or isolation due to social distancing. Among families and married individuals, these stressors were often expressed in additional daily hassles, with an influence on mental health. This study examined two moderated mediation models based on Bodenmann's systemic-transactional stress model. Specifically, the models tested the hypothesis that intra-dyadic stress mediates the association between extra-dyadic stress and mental health, while two measures of family functioning, cohesion and flexibility, moderate the relationship between extra and intra-dyadic stress...

Research has increasingly recognized the links of communal coping-a shared appraisal of a stressor and collaborative action to manage it-to positive adjustment outcomes in chronic illness. However, past literature rarely examines if these two components have unique links to relationship and health outcomes, if one component is more strongly linked than the other component to these outcomes, or if the two components interact to influence outcomes. Additionally, the impact of shared appraisal and collaboration may depend on the source-the patient or the romantic partner...

Marital disruption is associated with increased risk for a range of poor health outcomes, including disturbed sleep. This report examines trajectories of actigraphy-assessed sleep efficiency following marital separation as well as the extent to which daily social behaviors and individual differences in attachment explain variability in these trajectories over time. One hundred twenty-two recently-separated adults ( N = 122) were followed longitudinally for three assessment periods over five months. To objectively assess daily social behaviors and sleep efficiency, participants wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) during the day (for one weekend at each assessment period) and an actiwatch at night (for seven days at each assessment period)...

Main effect models contend that perceived social support benefits mental health in the presence and the absence of stressful events, whereas stress-buffering models contend that perceived social support benefits mental health especially when individuals are facing stressful events. We tested these models of how perceived social support impacts mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic and evaluated whether characteristics of everyday social interactions statistically mediated this association - namely, (a) received support, the visible and deliberate assistance provided by others, and (b) pleasantness, the extent to which an interaction is positive, flows easily, and leads individuals to feel understood and validated...

The transition to parenthood is marked by increased potential stressors and relationship satisfaction declines among new parents. Recently, it has been suggested that people with greater mindfulness perceived their environment as less stressful during difficult times in life, which in turn, is associated with greater relationship satisfaction. Accordingly, this dyadic diary study evaluated if perceived stress explains the link between new parents' mindfulness and relationship satisfaction. A total of 78 new parent couples ( N = 156 participants; M = 6 months postpartum) provided ecologically valid perceived stress and relationship satisfaction data by responding to a questionnaire on their smartphones, between 7 p...

Marital discord fuels depression, according to decades of research. Most prior studies in this area have focused on macro-longitudinal change in depression over the course of years, and on global ratings of marital satisfaction. Less work has examined fluctuations in depressed mood and marital discord in daily life, and none has investigated associations of short-term patterns with longer-term depressed mood and marital outcomes. Using data from participants in the Midlife in the U.S. (MIDUS) project, the current study examined daily associations between marital discord and depressed mood, as well as their links to concurrent and prospective patterns of past-month depressed mood and marital risk...

Financial well-being may be an important context for daily emotional reactivity to relationship tension (e.g., arguments) whose salience varies across historical time or as a function of exposure to economic downturns. This study investigated how emotional reactivity, operationalized as daily fluctuations in negative and positive affect associated with the occurrence of daily relationship tension, varied by financial well-being among those who were and were not exposed to the Great Recession of 2008. Two matched, independent subsamples of partnered individuals from the National Study of Daily Experiences completed identical 8-day diary protocols, one before the Great Recession ( n = 587) and one after ( n = 351)...

Attachment insecurity (i.e., attachment anxiety or avoidance) puts people at risk for dissatisfying relationships. However, the dyadic regulation model of insecurity buffering suggests that an understanding and responsive partner may help insecure individuals to regulate emotions, thus improving couples' relationships. It may also be that perceiving partners as understanding and empathic, especially in an exaggeratedly positive way (i.e., positive illusions) will buffer insecurity. In 196 mixed-gender newlywed couples, we investigated whether spouses' positive illusions about partner's dyadic perspective-taking moderated the association between spouses' attachment insecurity and spouses' and partners' marital satisfaction over two years...