Sasaki, Eri and Overall, Nickola C and Reis, Harry T and Righetti, Francesca and Chang, Valerie T and Low, Rachel ST and Henderson, Annette ME and McRae, Caitlin S and Cross, Emily J and Jayamaha, Shanuki D and Maniaci, Michael R and Reid, Camille J (2023) Feeling loved as a strong link in relationship interactions: Partners who feel loved may buffer destructive behavior by actors who feel unloved. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125 (2). pp. 367-396. DOI https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000419
Sasaki, Eri and Overall, Nickola C and Reis, Harry T and Righetti, Francesca and Chang, Valerie T and Low, Rachel ST and Henderson, Annette ME and McRae, Caitlin S and Cross, Emily J and Jayamaha, Shanuki D and Maniaci, Michael R and Reid, Camille J (2023) Feeling loved as a strong link in relationship interactions: Partners who feel loved may buffer destructive behavior by actors who feel unloved. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125 (2). pp. 367-396. DOI https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000419
Sasaki, Eri and Overall, Nickola C and Reis, Harry T and Righetti, Francesca and Chang, Valerie T and Low, Rachel ST and Henderson, Annette ME and McRae, Caitlin S and Cross, Emily J and Jayamaha, Shanuki D and Maniaci, Michael R and Reid, Camille J (2023) Feeling loved as a strong link in relationship interactions: Partners who feel loved may buffer destructive behavior by actors who feel unloved. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125 (2). pp. 367-396. DOI https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000419
Abstract
Feeling loved (loved, cared for, accepted, valued, understood) is inherently dyadic, yet most prior theoretical perspectives and investigations have focused on how actors feeling (un)loved shapes actors’ outcomes. Adopting a dyadic perspective, the present research tested whether the established links between actors feeling unloved and destructive (critical, hostile) behavior depended on partners’ feelings of being loved. Does feeling loved need to be mutual to reduce destructive behavior, or can partners feeling loved compensate for actors feeling unloved? In five dyadic observational studies, couples were recorded discussing conflicts, diverging preferences or relationship strengths, or interacting with their child (total N = 842 couples; 1,965 interactions). Participants reported how much they felt loved during each interaction and independent coders rated how much each person exhibited destructive behavior. Significant Actors’ × Partners’ Felt-Loved interactions revealed a strong-link/mutual felt-unloved pattern: partners’ high felt-loved buffered the damaging effect of actors’ low felt-loved on destructive behavior, resulting in actors’ destructive behavior mostly occurring when both actors’ and partners’ felt-loved was low. This dyadic pattern also emerged in three supplemental daily sampling studies. Providing directional support for the strong-link/mutual felt-unloved pattern, in Studies 4 and 5 involving two or more sequential interactions, Actors’ × Partners’ Felt-Loved in one interaction predicted actors’ destructive behavior within couples’ subsequent conflict interactions. The results illustrate the dyadic nature of feeling loved: Partners feeling loved can protect against actors feeling unloved in challenging interactions. Assessing Actor × Partner effects should be equally valuable for advancing understanding of other fundamentally dyadic relationship processes.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | love, destructive behavior, behavioral observation, strong link, buffering |
Divisions: | Faculty of Science and Health Faculty of Science and Health > Psychology, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 14 Mar 2023 13:51 |
Last Modified: | 07 Aug 2024 20:23 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/35116 |
Available files
Filename: JPSP (Sasaki et al. ....Cross...2023).pdf