Implicit negative evaluations about ex-partner predicts break-up adjustment: The brighter side of dark cognitions

Abstract

Using a subliminal priming lexical decision task, the present research investigated whether individuals who show negative implicit evaluations of an ex-partner immediately after a break-up show superior post-break-up emotional adjustment. As expected, individuals whose reaction times indicated negative implicit evaluations of their ex-partner showed reduced depressive affect immediately after the break-up. Individuals who did not initiate their break-up demonstrated less negative implicit evaluations of their ex-partners as well as more depressive affect. Finally, increased negative implicit evaluations of ex-partners over a one-month period were associated with corresponding improvements in adjustment. The findings demonstrate a critical role for implicit evaluations in post-break-up adjustment.

Keywords:

• Relationship dissolution
• Implicit priming
• Stressful life events
• Emotions

Acknowledgements

This research study was supported by the Clayton Research Fellowship for Graduate Student Excellence at the University of Utah. Selected findings from the study were presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, the 2009 annual meeting for the Association for Psychological Science in San Francisco, CA, and the 2009 mini-conference for the International Association of Relationship Research in Lawrence, Kansas.

I gratefully acknowledge Susan Vecchi, Anna Adams, Kendrick Allen, Nick Ward, Kyle Murdock, Dylan Camp, Lina Ramirez, and Lisa Diamond for their assistance with this project. I also gratefully acknowledge an anonymous reviewer for a comment that led to the manuscript's current title.

Notes

¹Analyses were conducted on RTs for correct responses only. I removed RTs that were more than three standard deviations above or below the mean, which consisted of less than 1% of the data. RTs were relatively normally distributed and log-transformations did not change the significance level of any of the results.

²All subsequent analyses were performed on the other five names included in the priming task. None of the subsequently reported significant associations existed in these conditions.

³When accounting for gender and days from break-up and first assessment, the association between terminator status and depressive affect was mediated by negative implicit evaluations following Baron and Kenny's (1986) four steps to establish mediation followed by a Sobel test (Z=2.25, p<.05). However, given the small sample size and the fact that mediation could not be established without these covariates included in the model, it seemed premature to confirm this causal pathway.

⁴Both hypothesis 1 and 3 were also supported by combining positive and negative affect into a one-index measure. Yet, it was clear in both analyses that negative affect was driving these associations because when positive and negative affect were evaluated independently, the associations with positive affect and the negative implicit evaluations prime were only significant at trend level (p<.10).