Doctor of Philosophy / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Amber Vennum / The literature suggests that aggressive behaviors occur in response to provocation (i.e., reactive aggression) or to achieve a goal (i.e., instrumental aggression). Relational aggression –when an individual harms another’s interpersonal relationships – has been studied from the reactive and instrumental framework in peer-directed contexts, usually with children. However, relational aggression in romantic relationships is yet to be studied from this framework. This dissertation includes a series of studies investigating whether two specific relationally aggressive behaviors found in romantic relationships (i.e., social sabotage and love withdrawal) are 1) motivated by instrumental and reactive aggression, 2) associated with differential characteristics, and 3) predictive of negative outcomes. The Romantic Relational Aggression Motivation (RRAM) scale, which included social sabotage and love withdrawal items with both instrumental and reactive motivations, was created to explore the above research questions. During Study 1a, an exploratory factor analysis using a sample of 170 emerging adults tested the factor structure of the RRAM. This resulted in love withdrawal, but not social sabotage, factoring into instrumental and reactive subscales. Using the same sample at a later wave, Study 1b refined the RRAM from Study 1a; the findings confirmed the results of Study 1a. In Study 2, using a sample of 118 emerging adults, the factor structure found in Study 1b was corroborated using a confirmatory factor analysis. Study 2 found that social sabotage was more closely related to instrumental than reactive love withdrawal. Reactive and instrumental love withdrawal were clearly differentiated based on their associations with constructs that were emotionally driven (e.g. neuroticism and hostile attribution bias) but not by their associations with constructs that dealt with power (e.g. self-relationship power and trait dominance). None of the romantic relational aggression scales were predictive of the negative outcomes in the study, possibly due to the small sample size (85 emerging adults) in the longitudinal portion of Study 2. As instrumental and reactive love withdrawal were associated with different constructs and combining the two together may cause substantial differences to be lost, the RRAM may be a useful tool for researchers of romantic relational aggression.

This study examines the association between couple implicit rules related to facilitating disclosure and marital quality with husband and wife romantic relational aggression as potential mediators. Couples (N-353 couples) who participated in the Flourishing Families Project, reported on their use of couple implicit rules related to disclosure. Results indicated that implicit rules for couple disclosure were positively related to marital quality for both husbands and wives. Those couples who reported more use of implicit rules related to disclosure were also likely to use less romantic relational aggression. In turn, both husband and wife romantic relational aggression was negatively related to their own as well as their partner's marital quality. Romantic relational aggression was a significant mediator between couple implicit rules for disclosure and marital quality for both husbands and wives. Implications for marital therapy are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine marital romantic relational aggression in parents and its impact on adolescent relational aggression, adolescent romantic relational aggression, internalizing, and school engagement with self-regulation as a potential mediator. Gender differences were also examined. Adolescents were from 328 two-parent families in a large north-western city in the United States and were between 12 and 17 years of age (M=14.24, SD=1.00, 51% female) at time 4. All independent variables except adolescent self-regulation were measured at wave 4, and all adolescent variables were measured at wave 5. Results indicate that higher levels of romantic relational aggression from mother to father was directly related to higher relational aggression in girls and lower romantic relational aggression in boys one year later. Father romantic relational aggression was directly and negatively related to romantic relational aggression in girls one year later. Mother romantic relational aggression was indirectly related to all outcomes in females only, in the predicted directions, through adolescent self-regulation. Father romantic relational aggression was indirectly related, in the predicted directions, to relational aggression, internalizing, and school engagement in boys only. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.