Relational Maintenance Behavior and Shared TV Viewing as Mediators of the Association Between Romanticism and Romantic Relationship Quality

Abstract

Nearly a century of research has demonstrated a positive association between romanticism—a relationship-type schema that emphasizes idealistic and positive experiences in romantic relationships—and quality of romantic relationships. This investigation examined whether relational maintenance behavior and shared TV viewing mediate that association. The sample contained 202 participants, including college students and older adults. Results demonstrated that relational maintenance behavior mediated the association between romanticism and relationship quality, but shared TV viewing did not. Nevertheless, shared TV viewing independently and positively predicted variance in relationship quality. These results both clarify the mechanism by which romanticism may operate and support shared media use as a maintenance behavior that may be meaningful in close relationships.

Keywords:

• Relational Maintenance
• Relationship Quality
• Romanticism
• Romantic Relationships
• Television

Acknowledgements

This article was presented at the 2016 meeting of the Central States Communication Association. Thanks to Megan Leite for her assistance with data collection.

Notes

1. One reviewer asked whether cohabitation might change the model, as cohabiting partners may tend to have more opportunity to watch TV together. A reanalysis of the model, which allowed cohabitation to covary with shared TV viewing, altered findings such that romanticism emerged as a significantly positive predictor of shared TV viewing (B = 0.17, SE = 0.08, β = 0.16, p < .05). Although this may appear to provide at least some provisional support for H4, I encourage caution when interpreting this post hoc analysis as such. Cohabitation status was collected as a demographic variable that provides information about the sample, not as a substantive predictor; thus, data collection and sampling did not seek to manage the other factors with which cohabitation is logically and statistically confounded (e.g., marital status, age, religious beliefs, geographic distance from partner,etc.).