Adult males’ perceptions of confirmation and relational partner communication apprehension: Indirect effects of fathers on sons’ partners

This research used a confirmation/disconfirmation framework to analyze adult males’ perceptions of their relationships with their fathers. In the present study, the degree to which men felt confirmed by their fathers was used to predict relational partners’ reluctance to engage in relational interaction and discomfort during such interactions. The effect of dyadic communication apprehension, the anxiety associated with one‐to‐one communication, was statistically controlled. Results of multivariate regression analyses indicated that (1) females’ dyadic communication apprehension accounted for a small but statistically significant percentage of variance in their discomfort scores, (2) males’ perceived confirmation from father explained a statistically significant percent of variance in “reluctance,” and (3) a statistically significant nonlinear effect was observed for perceived confirmation on reluctance. Overall, the predictor set explained 26.62% of the variance in the dependent variable set. Implications are discussed.

Key concepts:

• Adult males
• fathers
• relational partner communication apprehension
• perceived confirmation
• discomfort
• reluctance
• father hunger