Mental Contrasting and Behavior Change in Romantic Relationships

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Gabriele Oettingen
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 548656111

High satisfaction with a romantic relationship is associated with better physical and mental health. Building and maintaining long-lasting relationship satisfaction requires dealing with relationship conflicts appropriately. That is, engaging with solvable conflicts but letting go of unsolvable conflicts. In the proposed project, we will investigate whether using the self-regulation strategy of mentally contrasting the desired future of solving a conflict with one’s critical inner obstacle in the reality (MC) can help romantic couples engaging with conflicts appropriately and therefore increase relationship satisfaction. MC works by leading to engagement with a concern when the success expectations are high and letting go of a concern when success expectations are low. These effects have been replicated in various life areas (e.g., academic performance, health behavior, interpersonal relationships). In a pilot study, we found preliminary evidence that MC works the same way with romantic relationship conflicts. That is, compared to only indulging in the desired future, MC led to better conflict resolution when expectations were high (high perceived solvability). Better conflict resolution, in turn, was associated with higher relationship satisfaction 2 weeks later. In the proposed project, we first aim to replicate and extend the findings of our pilot study. To pre-empt a ceiling effect in relationship satisfaction, we will pre-screen participants to exclude those with very high relationship satisfaction (Study 1 and 2). To investigate the longevity and temporal dynamics of MC’s effects on conflict engagement and relationship satisfaction, we will use a 2-months follow-up (Study 1) and conduct a daily diary study over the course of 1 month (Study 2). Further, as both partners are interdependent in their pursuit of resolving a conflict, we will investigate MC’s effectiveness applying mutual instead of idiosyncratic wishes for the dyad. To do so, we will use online video conferencing (Study 3) and a lab setting (Study 4). Both settings allow a fine-grained analysis of the couples’ conflict behavior by recording and analyzing a discussion immediately after learning the MC strategy. Methodologically, this project encompasses self-report, systematic observation, and experience sampling. The studies’ settings span from controlled online and lab experiments to ecologically valid field studies. The project has theoretical implications by investigating—for the first time—MC’s effects on mutual instead of idiosyncratic wishes. Further, the project illuminates the processes of conflict engagement and disengagement and the circumstances under which both processes might be beneficial for relationship satisfaction in romantic couples. The project has practical implications by laying the groundwork for using MC in individual (e.g., app) and dyadic interventions (e.g., counselling) geared towards improving relationship satisfaction.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. A. Timur Sevincer