ICPR Abstracts: Session 10

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Session 10: Papers

Cognitive Processes in Close Relationships

10.1
Social Comparisons in Relationships: 
Feeling of Control as Mediator

Feng-Fang Tsai and Yi-Cheng Lin
National Taiwan University

The current study hypothesized that if an upward 
comparison is directed to an outgroup member, concern for 
competition should be relatively salient and the relative 
inferiority should make feeling of control correlate 
negatively with emotions.  Nonetheless, if the upward 
comparison is directed toward an intimate partner, the 
major concern would then be improvement.  Thus, feeling 
of control and emotional reactions should show positive 
correlations.  In this study, daily social comparisons were 
recorded using the Rochester Social Comparison Record 
and relationship intimacy was measured with a Q-sort 
technique.  Results confirmed our original hypothesis that 
feeling of control showed significant mediating effects.  
The interactive processes among relationships, social 
comparison, feeling of control, and emotions are 
discussed. 

10.2
The Affective Consequences of Social Comparison 
Information among Marital Couples

Bram P. Buunk
University of Groningen

Two studies among respectively 219 and 760 subjects 
examined the affective consequences of social comparison 
among marital couples by presenting subjects with a bogus 
interview with another married individual.  The interview 
contained either upward or downward comparison 
information, and the information that the individual put 
either high or low effort into the relationship. In both 
studies, subjects experienced more positive affect, less 
negative affect, and more identification when confronted 
with an upward target than when confronted with a 
downward target.  However, when confronted with a 
downward comparison target, a more positive affective 
response was generated by a high degree of effort. 
Identification appeared to mediate the effect of social 
comparison upon affect. 

10.3
"I Really Didn't Think You'd Do That":
The Valence of Expectation Violations in Relationships
and Their Effect on Uncertainty

Sandra Metts, Illinois State University
Walid Afifi, University of Delaware

The very few studies that have been conducted on 
expectation violations in relationships are plagued by 
conceptual and/or methodological limitations that 
significantly restrict their utility.  Perhaps most striking is 
the strong bias in the relational violations literature for a 
conceptualization of such behaviors as negative.  Secondly, 
scholars have wrongly assumed that violations are 
inherently uncertainty-producing.  Finally, the available 
relational violations study tie these behaviors to major 
relational turning points.  This investigation addresses the 
above limitations and sheds light on the type of day-to-day 
violations that are experienced in relationships.  Data from 
225 participants reveals nine types of relational violations 
that vary on valence, severity and impact on uncertainty. 

10.4
The Impact of Storytelling on 
Relationship-Conflict Attributions

Ian McGregor and John G. Holmes
University of Waterloo

        Recent research indicates that motivated story-
telling helps maintain confidence in relationships (S. 
Murray & J. Holmes, 1993; in press).  The present study 
investigated possible mechanisms mediating the benefits 
of storytelling.  Participants rehearsed the details of a 
relationship-conflict vignette and then were assigned to act 
as either "Kim's" or "Jim's" lawyer, weaving the vignette 
details into a biased story.  Two weeks later, participant 
blame attributions about the vignette-conflict were biased 
by the story they told at time-one.  This bias was not 
mediated by detail memory, which exerted an independent 
significant effect on blame.

10.5
An Experimental Test of the Prototype Matching 
Model of Relationship Quality

Manfred Hassebrauck, University of Mannheim

According to the prototype matching model of relationship 
quality a close relationship should be increasingly better 
evaluated the closer the respective relationship is to a 
prototype of a good relationship. In the experiment 
reported here, close relationships were described using 
features of relationship quality differing in centrality and 
intensity. According to predictions derived from the 
prototype matching model an interaction of feature 
centrality and feature intensity was found: Relationships 
best described by central features (eg. trust) were 
increasingly highly evaluated with an increase in the 
intensity of the features.  However, intensity did not effect 
the ratings of those relationships which are best described 
by peripheral features.