No description available.

No description available.

Research has shown that forgiveness promotes individual psychological well-being as well as positive relationship functioning. Moreover, couples themselves report that forgiving is one of the most important reasons that their relationships stand the test of time (Fenell,1993). However, the partner behaviours that facilitate, or even thwart, forgiveness in romantic relationships have been the subject of limited empirical research. In the current study, I investigated the effects of two sets of partner behaviour—offers of amends and expressions of responsiveness (i.e. understanding, validation, care)—on forgiveness for real-life hurtful events in romantic relationships. Sixty-four couples participated in a lab-based, experimental study in which I manipulated whether the partner who disclosed feelings about an unresolved, hurtful event (“victim”) received a videotaped response from his/her partner in which this partner (“offender”) expressed: 1) responsiveness only, 2) amends only, 3) both responsiveness and amends, or 4) neither responsiveness nor amends (control group). Trained coders provided micro-ratings of offenders’ specific responsive (e.g., perspective-taking) and amends (e.g., apology) behaviour as well as macro-ratings of more global displays of these behaviours (e.g., overall understanding, overall remorse). Victims also completed measures of relationship satisfaction, event severity, perceptions of their partners’ amends, perceptions of their partners’ responsiveness, and forgiveness. The findings suggest that event severity moderates the effectiveness of the general act of offering amends and/or responsiveness in promoting forgiveness. When event severity was high, the experimental manipulation of the presence vs. absence of amends and of responsiveness did not affect forgiveness. However, it did affect forgiveness for less severe events. Specifically, expressions of amends, responsiveness and their combination yielded similarly more forgiveness than no response at all. These effects were iv mediated by the victim’s perceptions of the offender’s responsiveness to his/her experience of the hurtful event. Further, results indicated that the victims’ perceptions of the offenders’ responsiveness could be promoted, or thwarted, by the content of the offenders’ amends. Micro-ratings of offenders’ amends behaviour demonstrated that when event severity is low, more elaborate offers of amends, in particular remorse, increase the victims’ perceptions of partner responsiveness, which in turn, facilitate forgiveness. To the contrary, when event severity is high, offering more elaborate offers of amends has no effect at all in facilitating victims’ perceptions of responsiveness, and expressing more remorse in particular, may backfire. Finally, the associations between coders’ ratings of the offenders’ behaviour with the victims’ perceptions suggested that the victims’ perceptions, especially of responsive behaviour, are perhaps largely self-construed.

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CHUTZPAH is a romantic movie set in Manhattan. The events surrounding the death of a wealthy eccentric cumulate into a farcical search for the old man's fortune when it is stolen shortly after his funeral. Ellen, the protagonist, hires a detective to find out who stole her grandfather's money (a substantial sum of which was willed to her). As Mark, the detective, works on the case, a relationship between him and Ellen develops, and the search for the money becomes secondary. Ellen's charm and her relationship with her zany Yiddish relatives endear her to Mark while they together find chutzpah in disaster.

The present study examined whether someone’s implicit theories of relationships (ITORs) has an effect on whose opinion and what type of opinion has more influence on their romantic relationship dynamics. Individuals high in destiny beliefs view relationships as either meant to be or not meant to be. Individuals high in growth beliefs think relationships take work to maintain and that problems can be overcome. Combined these form orientations- cultivation orientation where the individual is high growth/low destiny and evaluation orientation which is high destiny/low growth. I analyzed an archived dataset where participants completed Sinclair’s (2008) Social Network Opinion Scale, Lund’s (1985) commitment scale, and Knee’s (1998) Implicit Theories of Relationship scale. We found evaluation orientation individuals are significantly more committed as parent approval rises, and significantly less committed as parent approval declines. Those exhibiting the cultivation orientation managed to maintain commitment regardless of parent opinion, consistent with hypothesis two.

Secret Schemes is a collection of four short stories and three chapters of a novel; all the stories are humorous and deal with young women and their struggles in romantic relationships.

This project explores the link between exposure to family instability through maternal repartnering and the development of romantic interest and involvement during childhood and preadolescence. Family instability has long reaching consequences, especially for children's well being. Exposure to family instability spills over into children's own lives, implying parents and children's lives are inextricably linked. The actions, experiences, and choices of parents have a direct and measurable impact on children's lives, as evidenced by links between parents' marital lives and their offspring's romantic involvement during adolescence and adulthood. The goal of this project is twofold. First, I build on this literature to explore how maternal repartnering impacts children's romantic interest and involvement. Through various mechanisms such as increased awareness of romance or searching for a substitute in response to maternal repartnering, I expect children's romantic interest and involvement will be associated with maternal repartnering behaviors and attitudes. The second goal of this project explores this association among a sample of children and preadolescents, examining this link during an earlier period in the life course than existing literature. This includes an in depth examination of the characteristics and developmental trajectories of romantic interest and involvement beginning at age five and extending to age 13. Results suggest that romantic interest and involvement emerges during childhood and is associated with both individual and family level characteristics. As children mature, they report substantially greater levels of romantic involvement with each passing year. Changes in romantic involvement correspond to greater social and pubertal development. Children's reports of romantic interest did not show developmental change but were relatively stable over time. There were no consistent effects of maternal repartnering on children's romantic involvement. Children's romantic interest was linked with maternal repartnering attitudes however. Higher levels of maternal focus on repartnering were associated with greater romantic interest among children, suggesting that maternal repartnering does impact children's romantic trajectories. / text

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is the direct, purposeful self-infliction of injury, which results in tissue damage, is performed without conscious suicidal intent and through methods that are not socially sanctioned (Nixon & Heath, 2009). The phenomenon of self-injurious behaviours is alarming, especially among adolescents and young adults (Muehlenkamp, 2005). In fact, it is estimated that lifetime prevalence of NSSI in young adults within the general population is around 12% to 38% (for reviews, see Heath, Schaub, Holly, & Nixon, 2009; Jacobson & Gould, 2007; Rodham & Hawton, 2009). While this proportion declines when assessing recent NSSI (i.e., usually performed in the past six months or in the past year), the numbers are still disturbing with 2.5% to 12.5% of young adults reporting current NSSI (for reviews, see Heath et al., 2009; Jacobson & Gould, 2007; Rodham & Hawton, 2009). The goal of this thesis is to investigate the associations between romantic relationships and NSSI in young adults and to address two major limitations that emerge from the literature, namely: a) several theoretical hypotheses have yet to be validated despite considerable advances in the scientific study of NSSI; and b) with the exception of one study, the few studies available relating romantic relationships and NSSI solely focused on the individual level of analysis instead of including both partners in the model. This goal will be addressed through three articles, each targeting specific objectives. For the sake of methodological rigor and for adequate evaluation of the constructs under study, the purpose of the first study was to validate the factorial structure of the English version of the Dyadic Coping Inventory (DCI; Bodenmann, 2008). A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) corroborated the measurement theory of the DCI by revealing the presence of five coping factors (i.e., stress communication, supportive dyadic coping, delegated dyadic coping, negative dyadic coping, common dyadic coping) and two target factors (i.e., one’s own dyadic coping and partner’s dyadic coping). The English DCI also demonstrated good internal reliability and yielded preliminary evidence of concurrent validity. All together, these findings lead to the conclusion that the English DCI is an accurate and reliable measure of dyadic coping, and that researchers can use the English DCI confidently in their research to evaluate dyadic coping processes. The established factorial structure of the English DCI was then used in subsequent studies of this thesis. The purpose of the second study was to investigate direct and indirect associations between insecure romantic attachment, difficulties in emotion regulation and common dyadic coping strategies, and endorsement of NSSI behaviours. From an empirical standpoint, this study is the first to explore these specific relationships in one comprehensive model, targeting both interpersonal and intrapersonal strategies to deal with stressful experiences and the role it might have on one’s NSSI behaviours. Overall, the results revealed that difficulties in emotion regulation mediated the relationships between romantic attachment insecurity (i.e., attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance) and NSSI, whereas no such effects were found for common dyadic coping strategies. Findings from this study suggest that intrapersonal strategies (i.e., emotion regulation) might be more influential on one’s NSSI behaviours than behavioural strategies (i.e., common dyadic coping). This study also offers a first step towards the understanding of the romantic relational context of individuals struggling with NSSI behaviours. The next step remains to explore the couple as the unit of analysis rather than focusing on only one member of the relationship, giving way to the third study of this thesis. The primary aim of the third study was to generate a general portrait of young women’s romantic relationship functioning, distinguishing women who recently self-injured from those who have never self-injured. This study was designed to permit the exploration of not only the individual-level effects, but also potential effects from the romantic partner. Through a series of nonparametric Mann-Whitney U tests, results revealed that women who engage in NSSI behaviours are more likely to report subjective distress in the form of attachment anxiety and distrust compared to women who do not engage in NSSI behaviours. They also reported good, but slightly lower levels of, relationship satisfaction and adaptive dyadic coping strategies compared to women who have never engaged in NSSI. Findings also showed that partners of women who engage in NSSI behaviour reported more attachment anxiety than partners of women who do not engage in NSSI behaviours. The women and their partner’s reports about their romantic relationship experiences provide unique insight into the similarities and differences of individuals who self-injure and those who do not. Furthermore, a cursory exploration of the partners’ NSSI behaviours revealed that nearly one-third of the partners in a relationship with women who self-injured also reported having recently engaged in NSSI behaviours. These findings add some depth to the understanding of the relational context of those who are struggling with NSSI and provide future directions in research.

This longitudinal study investigates whether the timing of sexual debut (early, on-time, or late, compared to one’s peers) is associated with young adult romantic relationship quality (i.e., overt and relational victimization, relational aggression, dating worries, and positive dating experiences) either directly or indirectly by moderating the relationship between trajectories of individual factors (internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and alcohol use) young adult romantic relationship quality. Participants were from a large, six-wave longitudinal study (N = 662, 48% males, M age at T1 = 15.5 years, SD = 1.9 years). I use multi-step regression models to estimate how sexual debut group moderates the association between individual factors and young adult romantic relationship experiences by estimating slopes and intercepts for individual factors and creating interaction terms to test the moderating effect of timing of sexual debut on the slopes and intercepts of individual factors. Gender differences are also investigated. Results indicate that early sexual debut is associated with higher baseline levels of individual factors and directly predicts negative relationship experiences in young adulthood. Early sexual debut moderates the relationship between baseline internalizing symptoms and negative dating experiences and dating worries in young adulthood. Findings also show that early sexual debut moderates the relationship between steeper increases in externalizing symptoms and negative dating experiences and dating worries. The results provide a better understanding of the longitudinal impacts of adolescent experiences on young adult relationship outcomes. / Graduate