Citation

Salvatore JE, Kuo SI, Steele RD, Simpson JA, Collins WA. Psychol. Sci. 2011; 22(3): 376-383.

Affiliation

Institute of Child Development, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. salv0041@umn.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797610397055

PMID

21245491

PMCID

PMC3060296

Abstract

This study adopted a developmental perspective on recovery from conflict in romantic relationships. Participants were 73 young adults (target participants), studied since birth, and their romantic partners. A novel observational coding scheme was used to evaluate each participant's degree of conflict recovery, operationalized as the extent to which the participant disengaged from conflict during a 4-min "cool-down" task immediately following a 10-min conflict discussion. Conflict recovery was systematically associated with developmental and dyadic processes. Targets who were rated as securely attached more times in infancy recovered from conflict better, as did their romantic partners. Concurrently, having a romantic partner who displayed better recovery predicted more positive relationship emotions and greater relationship satisfaction. Prospectively, target participants' early attachment security and their partners' degree of conflict recovery interacted to predict relationship stability 2 years later, such that having a partner who recovered from conflict better buffered targets with insecure histories.

Language: en