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Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation
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Published on: March 1, 2017

Automatic and self-reported attitudes in romantic relationships.

Anthony Scinta1, Shelly L Gable

  • 1Department of Psychology, Nevada State College, Henderson, NV 89015, USA. tony.scinta@nsc.nevada.edu

Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
|May 16, 2007
PubMed
Summary

Individuals with high barriers to exiting relationships may mask doubts by overreporting positivity. Automatic attitudes, measured by response latency, revealed this discrepancy, impacting relationship satisfaction.

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Area of Science:

  • Social Psychology
  • Relationship Science
  • Attitude Measurement

Background:

  • Assessing genuine attitudes in relationships is challenging, especially when individuals are unwilling or unable to self-report accurately.
  • Response latency measures offer a potential method to gauge automatic attitudes, bypassing conscious social desirability biases.
  • Barriers to exiting (BTE) a relationship may influence the congruence between explicit self-reports and implicit attitudes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between automatic attitudes and self-reported relationship quality using response latency measures.
  • To examine the moderating role of barriers to exiting (BTE) on the association between automatic and explicit relationship attitudes.
  • To compare the efficacy of different response latency measures (word-based vs. image-based) in assessing automatic attitudes.

Main Methods:

  • Two studies were conducted involving participants in dating relationships.
  • Participants completed response latency measures (assessing automatic attitudes) and relationship self-report questionnaires.
  • Study 1 (n=51) assessed attitudes at Time 1 and relationship satisfaction at Times 1 and 2.
  • Study 2 (n=41 couples) replicated findings and compared image-based and word-based response latency measures.

Main Results:

  • Participants with high barriers to exiting (BTE) showed a negative correlation between self-reported relationship positivity and automatic attitudes.
  • Automatic attitudes at Time 1 provided some predictive evidence for relationship satisfaction at Time 2.
  • Image-based response latency measures appeared more effective than word-based measures for assessing automatic attitudes.

Conclusions:

  • High BTE individuals may consciously or unconsciously overreport relationship positivity to mask underlying doubts or dissatisfaction.
  • Automatic attitudes, particularly when measured with image-based tasks, can reveal discrepancies not evident in self-reports.
  • Understanding the interplay between barriers to exiting, automatic attitudes, and self-reports is crucial for a comprehensive view of relationship dynamics.