Self-regulation in the Interplay of Individual Dispositions and Relationship Outcomes

Even though humans strive to form long-lasting relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), high divorce rates among industrialized countries (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019; European Commission, 2015) reflect how difficult it is to achieve this goal. As a consequence, researchers have set out to explore indicators and factors of successful relationships. An abundance of studies have identified individual dispositions as correlates of relationship quality (for an overview see Ozer & Benet-Martínez, 2006). However, their focus on global personality constructs has been criticized as those constructs might not be suited to explain specific psychological functioning (Winterheld & Simpson, 2018). Similarly, the underlying processes of the associations between individual dispositions and relationship outcomes have often been neglected and the need to study cognitive, emotional, motivational and behavioral processes has been pointed out (Back et al., 2011). The present research aims to address these gaps by focusing on the role of self-regulation. It takes suggestions of self-regulation researchers into account that emphasize that individual dispositions are expressed through self-regulatory processes (Hoyle, 2010; Scholer & Higgins, 2010). In addition, the research makes use of self-regulation theories that describe human goals and needs and thus, offer explanations as to why individuals respond in certain ways (Winterheld & Simpson, 2018). Three research questions are derived and tested in three chapters of this dissertation. They take different theories of self-regulation into account to better understand distinct perspectives and processes of self-regulation in the interplay of individual dispositions and relationship outcomes. The first research question focused on whether emotion regulation mediates the association between insecure adult attachment (i.e., avoidance or anxiety) and relationship quality. Adults experience relationships differently depending on their attachment style (Hazan & Shaver, 1987) and both insecure attachment styles have been related to impaired relationship outcomes (e.g., Chung, 2014; Lowyck et al., 2008). During challenging situations, attachment styles are involved in individuals’ affective self-regulatory responses (Mikulincer et al., 2003; Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002), and emotion regulation has been related to interpersonal outcomes (e.g., Gross & John, 2003). Thus, it was proposed that spontaneous emotion regulation during conflict discussions, mediates the link between adult attachment and relationship quality. Couples discussed an ongoing conflict of their relationships during a laboratory session and provided ratings on their emotion regulation and relationship quality with regard to the discussion. As expected, different emotion regulation strategies mediated the link of adult attachment and relationship quality (e.g., by avoidant individuals engaging in more expressive suppression which was related to lower levels of relationship quality). The second research question focused on implicit aspects of the emotion regulation strategy expressive suppression. Expressive suppression is one of the most frequently used emotion regulation strategies in social context and has been found to be negatively related to interpersonal outcomes (e.g., Butler et al., 2003; Gross et al., 2006; Impett et al., 2012). Many studies have focused on controlled aspects of expressive suppression, even though emotion regulatory processes can also be automatic (Gross, 1998b; Webb et al., 2015). Therefore, a measure of automatic emotion regulation tendencies (i.e., the Emotion Regulation Implicit Association Test; Mauss et al., 2006) was adapted to study implicit aspects of expressive suppression (i.e., Suppression-IAT) in relation to interpersonal outcomes. Couples completed the Suppression-IAT at a laboratory session in addition to measures on their relationship quality, and engaged in a videotaped conflict discussion that was used to rate their interaction behavior. At a 6-month follow-up, couples completed further measures on their relationship quality and communication patterns. As expected, a positive implicit evaluation of expressive suppression was negatively related to relationship outcomes, such as relationship satisfaction and positive partner communication. The results mirror findings on explicit aspects of expressive suppression and show that implicit aspects of emotion regulation are important in social context and should thus, be considered in future research to get a more complete picture on how emotion regulation shapes relationship functioning. The third research question focused on underlying processes of the well-described link between self-esteem and relationship quality (for a review see Erol & Orth, 2016). Two studies tested if regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) could explain how the regulatory foci (i.e., promotion or prevention focus) romantic partners adopt when discussing a conflict with their partners could be mediators of this link. Self-esteem was assessed with explicit and implicit measures to provide a picture of controlled and automatic processes. Regulatory focus was assessed via self-reports (Study 1) and by independent observers (Study 2), and partners rated their perceived relationship quality with regard to conflict interactions. The results show that regulatory focus plays a mediating role with regard to the association between self-esteem and relationship quality, and they show that those associations might differ for controlled and automatic processes (i.e., promotion focus mediated the link of implicit self-esteem and relationship quality, but not of explicit self-esteem and relationship quality). In sum, the results presented in this dissertation contribute to the literature on the quality of romantic relationships. They demonstrate that self-regulation plays an important role in the interplay of individual dispositions and relationship outcomes. They show that individual dispositions shape naturally occurring self-regulation tendencies during partner interactions, and that those affective, motivational or behavioral processes play a crucial role in how partners perceive their relationships. In addition, the results indicate that implicit and explicit processes need to be taken into consideration when studying relationship functioning