Childhood maltreatment can lead to poor socioemotional development, which may undermine parental functioning in adulthood. Having a large social network of relatives and friends, however, might buffer the effects of childhood maltreatment on parents. This prediction was examined using prospective data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk Adaptation (N = 173). Early childhood maltreatment was assessed prospectively at ages 0 - 5. Socioemotional competence during middle childhood and adolescence (ages 5 - 16) was assessed via teacher reports. Adult parenting was assessed using a semi-structured interview at age 32 (N = 106) and dyadic parent-child observations at various ages (N = 85). At age 32, participants also wrote the names of friends and relatives in their inner, middle, and outer social circles. In a moderated mediation analysis, childhood maltreatment forecasted low socioemotional competence, which in turn predicted more negative parental orientations (greater hostility and lower emotional connectedness and involvement) and lower observed parental support in adulthood. However, having a large social network and having friends in one's inner circle buffered this effect. These results highlight the significance of social networks in supporting parents who were maltreated in childhood, and primarily the importance of close friends.

Close relationships are associated with many positive outcomes throughout life, including improved physical health and well-being. Traditionally, theory and research on the health benefits of close relationships have focused on either the total amount of support perceived available within a person's entire social network or the support provided by romantic partners (Shankar et al. in Psychology and Health , 30(6), 686–698; 2015). Limited work has examined the impact of distinct relationship types, particularly friends. In this article, we address this critical gap in our current knowledge. First, we identify the features of friends and friendship networks that distinguish them from other types of adult relationships, especially romantic relationships. Second, we use the strength and strain model (Slatcher & Selcuk in Current Directions in Psychological Science , 26(1), 16–21; 2017) as a framework to consider how adult friendships might impact physical health in ways similar to but also distinct from romantic partners. Utilizing this specific model, we identify features of friendships—the size and structure of friendship networks, the norms that define friendships, and the levels of interdependence in friendships—and discuss how each feature can amplify or blunt the strengths and strains afforded by friends, including their impact on health. Finally, we provide a roadmap and identify priorities to advance research on friendships and physical health.

Objective: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is related to many negative health outcomes for victims. Our aim was to determine whether two types of emotion regulation strategies-cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression-moderate the effect of IPV victimization on health over time. Method: We recruited 1,200 participants to complete an initial survey during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that assessed IPV victimization, habitual emotion regulation strategy use, and three indexes of health (i.e., general health, sickness behavior, and substance use). These participants then completed a follow-up survey 10 months later to reassess their health. We evaluated how habitual cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression moderated the effect of IPV victimization on each of the measures of health at follow-up, controlling for the initial respective measure of health. Results: Accounting for initial health, IPV victimization at the beginning of the pandemic was associated with worse general health, more sickness behavior, and greater substance use 10 months later. At higher levels of habitual expressive suppression, IPV victimization was associated with greater substance use. Unexpectedly, at higher levels of habitual cognitive reappraisal, IPV victimization was associated with worse general health and greater substance use. Conclusions: Our work demonstrates the long-term health effects of IPV victimization and that both expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal can exacerbate these effects on general health and substance use. Findings highlight a specific context in which cognitive reappraisal may not be a health-protective emotion regulation strategy. This should be considered in practical and therapeutic settings that serve individuals who have experienced IPV.

The primary aim of the current mixed-method study was to examine factors that predict adult sexual assault disclosure in romantic relationships and understand how romantic partners respond if survivors choose to disclose their experiences to them. Sexual assault survivors (N = 330; 93% cisgender women) completed online surveys assessing disclosure and various factors that might be associated with disclosure, and described how their partner responded to their disclosure or what prevented them from disclosing (qualitatively coded). Many victims did not disclose experiences of assault to their partners. Proportional odds logistic regression revealed that survivors who perceived their partners as more responsive were more likely to have disclosed, but partner trust was unrelated to disclosure. Attachment avoidance (but not anxiety) was negatively related to disclosure. Sexual and gender minority victims were more likely to have disclosed to their partners; race was unrelated to disclosure. The most common qualitative response was that partners reacted to disclosures with emotional support, although some responded negatively. Survivors most often chose not to tell their partners because the assault was too difficult to talk about or was not relevant to the relationship. Sexual assault stigma may play out in victims' disclosure decisions and partners' disclosure reactions.

Background: Research on the relation between sexual assault (SA) and romantic functioning has yielded inconsistent results. The goals of the current studies were to examine this association while addressing limitations of past research; assessing revictimization, multiple victimization, and assault timing; and examining whether this association was moderated by neuroticism, attachment orientations, or perceived partner responsiveness. Design and Methods: College students (Study 1; N = 437) and community members (Study 2; N = 566) completed measures assessing SA, romantic functioning, attachment, neuroticism, and partner responsiveness. Study 2 used a mixed-methods approach. Data were collected via online surveys in psychology courses (Study 1) and on Prolific (Study 2). Results: In Study 1, SA was not associated with romantic functioning and this association was not moderated by attachment or neuroticism. In Study 2, SA survivors reported significantly poorer relationship quality and less partner trust, but not less sexual satisfaction. However, significant effects were small. Partner responsiveness did not moderate these associations, and revictimization, multiple victimizations, and assault recency were not related to poorer functioning. In qualitative data, the most common response was that the SA had not affected participants’ relationships. Conclusions: Relationships may be one area in which SA survivors demonstrate resilience.

Recent research challenges the common belief that romantic relationships matter more to women than men. Using insights from the interdisciplinary literature on mixed-gender relationships, we propose that relative to women, men (a) expect more benefits from relationships and strive for a partner more strongly, (b) gain more mental and physical health benefits from romantic involvement, (c) are less likely to initiate breakups, and (d) suffer more from relationship dissolution. We argue that these differences largely stem from differences between men and women in available intimacy and emotional support. We discuss implications for friendships, emphasizing the importance of cross-gender friendships. Women are often viewed as more romantic than men, and romantic relationships are assumed to be more central to the lives of women than to those of men. Despite the prevalence of these beliefs, some recent research paints a different picture. Using principles and insights based on the interdisciplinary literature on mixed-gender relationships, we advance a set of four propositions relevant to differences between men and women and their romantic relationships. We propose that relative to women: (a) men expect to obtain greater benefits from relationship formation and thus strive more strongly for a romantic partner, (b) men benefit more from romantic relationship involvement in terms of their mental and physical health, (c) men are less likely to initiate breakups, and (d) men suffer more from relationship dissolution. We offer theoretical explanations based on differences between men and women in the availability of social networks that provide intimacy and emotional support. We discuss implications for friendships in general and friendships between men and women in particular.

Interparental interactions have an important influence on child well-being and development. Yet prior theory and research have primarily focused on interparental conflict as contributing to child maladjustment, which leaves out the critical question of how interparental positive interactions—such as expressed gratitude, capitalization, and shared laughter—may benefit child growth and development. In this article, we integrate theory and research in family, relationship, and affective science to propose a new framework for understanding how the heretofore underexamined positive interparental interactions influence children: interparental positivity spillover theory (IPST). IPST proposes that, distinct from the influence of conflict, interparental positive interactions spill over into children’s experiences in the form of their (a) experience of positive emotions, (b) beneficially altered perceptions of their parents, and (c) emulation of their parents’ positive interpersonal behaviors. This spillover is theorized to promote beneficial cognitive, behavioral, social, and physiological outcomes in children in the short term (i.e., immediately after a specific episode of interparental positivity, or on a given day) as well as cumulatively across time. As a framework, IPST generates a host of novel and testable predictions to guide future research, all of which have important implications for the mental health, well-being, and positive development of children and families.

The idea that some abilities might be enhanced by adversity is gaining traction. Adaptation-based approaches have uncovered a few specific abilities enhanced by particular adversity exposures. Yet, for a field to grow, we must not dig too deep, too soon. In this paper, we complement confirmatory research with principled exploration. We draw on two insights from adaptation-based research: 1) enhanced performance manifests within individuals, and 2) reduced and enhanced performance can co-occur. Although commonly assumed, relative performance differences are rarely tested. To quantify them, we need a wide variety of ability measures. However, rather than using adaptive logic to predict which abilities are enhanced or reduced, we develop statistical criteria to identify three data patterns: reduced, enhanced, and intact performance. With these criteria, we analyzed data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to investigate how adversity shapes within-person performance across 10 abilities in a cognitive and achievement battery. Our goals are to document adversity-shaped cognitive performance patterns, identify drivers of reduced performance, identify sets of "intact" abilities, and discover new enhanced abilities. We believe principled exploration with clear criteria can help break new theoretical and empirical ground, remap old territory, and advance theory development.

The Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) is a landmark prospective, longitudinal study of human development focused on a sample of mothers experiencing poverty and their firstborn children. Although the MLSRA pioneered a number of important topics in the area of social and emotional development, it began with the more specific goal of examining the antecedents of child maltreatment. From that foundation and for more than 40 years, the study has produced a significant body of research on the origins, sequelae, and measurement of childhood abuse and neglect. The principal objectives of this report are to document the early history of the MLSRA and its contributions to the study of child maltreatment and to review and summarize results from the recently updated childhood abuse and neglect coding of the cohort, with particular emphasis on findings related to adult adjustment. While doing so, we highlight key themes and contributions from Dr Dante Cicchetti's body of research and developmental psychopathology perspective to the MLSRA, a project launched during his tenure as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.

This research examined potential matching patterns between romantic partners in Big Five personality traits and relationship-specific characteristics such as attachment orientations, caregiving systems, conflict resolution, partner responsiveness, and trust. We analyzed two existing longitudinal studies that had complementary samples: 184 couples who had dated for less than one year and 168 married or cohabiting couples across the first two years of parenthood. We found evidence for assortative mating across various relationship-specific characteristics both at baseline and longitudinally, which were often stronger in magnitude than assortment based on Big Five traits. However, couples often perceived each other to be more similar than their actual similarity indicated. Further, there was little evidence to support the benefits of between-partner similarity for relationship quality after controlling for actor and partner effects of both partners’ score levels on each construct. We highlighted the importance of including personality assessments beyond one-time, self-reported measures of Big Five traits in investigating assortative mating processes.

Extant research has demonstrated that higher mean (average) levels of social support often produce robust relational benefits. However, partners may not maintain the same level of support across time, resulting in potential fluctuations (i.e., within-person variations across time) in support. Despite the theorizing and initial research on fluctuations in relationship-relevant thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, little is known about (a) who is most likely to fluctuate in support and (b) the degree to which fluctuations, in combination with and beyond mean levels, impact relationships across time. The current preregistered research examined two dyadic longitudinal samples of first-time parents undergoing the transition to parenthood, a chronically stressful time that often entails the provision and receipt of support involving one's partner. Across both studies, we found that individuals who reported greater mental health problems, more situational stress, and more destructive dispositional attributes tended to report lower mean levels and higher fluctuations in provided and received support at subsequent assessments. Moreover, we found that greater fluctuations in perceptions and observations of support predicted decreases in relationship satisfaction over time, above and beyond the effect of mean levels. Implications for theory and studying nonlinear effects in relationships are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Meta-analyses demonstrate that the quality of early attachment is modestly associated with peer social competence (r = .19) and externalizing behavior (r = -.15), but weakly associated with internalizing symptoms (r = -.07) across early development (Groh et al., Child Development Perspectives, 11(1), 70-76, 2017). Nonetheless, these reviews suffer from limitations that undermine confidence in reported estimates, including evidence for publication bias and the lack of comprehensive assessments of outcome measures from longitudinal studies in the literature. Moreover, theoretical claims regarding the specificity of the predictive significance of early attachment variation for socioemotional versus academic outcomes had not been evaluated when the analyses for this report were registered (but see Dagan et al., Child Development, 1-20, 2023; Deneault et al., Developmental Review, 70, 101093, 2023). To address these limitations, we conducted a set of registered analyses to evaluate the predictive validity of infant attachment in two landmark studies of the Strange Situation: the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD). Across-time composite assessments reflecting teacher report, mother report, and self-reports of each outcome measure were created. Bivariate associations between infant attachment security and socioemotional outcomes in the MLSRA were comparable to, or slightly weaker than, those reported in the recent meta-analyses, whereas those in the SECCYD were weaker for these outcomes. Controlling for four demographic covariates, partial correlation coefficients between infant attachment and all socioemotional outcomes were r <= .10 to .15 in both samples. Compositing Strange Situations at ages 12 and 18 months did not substantively alter the predictive validity of the measure in the MLSRA, though a composite measure of three different early attachment measures in the SECCYD did increase predictive validity coefficients. Associations between infant attachment security and academic skills were unexpectedly comparable to (SECCYD) or larger than (MLSRA) those observed with respect to socioemotional outcomes.

Over the past two decades, there has been a significant shift in how dehumanization is conceptualized and studied. This shift has broadened the construct from the blatant denial of humanness to groups to include more subtle dehumanization within people's interpersonal relationships. In this article, we focus on conceptual and empirical advances in the study of dehumanization in interpersonal relationships, with a particular focus on dehumanizing behaviors. In the first section, we describe the concept of interpersonal dehumanization. In the second section, we review social cognitive and behavioral research into interpersonal dehumanization. Within this section, we place special emphasis on the conceptualization and measurement of dehumanizing behaviors. We then propose a conceptual model of interpersonal dehumanization to guide future research. While doing so, we provide a novel review and integration of cutting-edge research on interpersonal dehumanization.

Childhood adversity is associated with higher adult weight, but few investigations prospectively test mechanisms accounting for this association. Using two socioeconomically high-risk prospective longitudinal investigations, the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA; N = 267; 45.3% female) and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS; n = 2,587; 48.5% female), pathways between childhood adversity and later body mass index (BMI) were tested using impulsivity, emotion dysregulation, and overeating as mediators. Childhood adversity from 0 to 5 years included four types of adversities: greater unpredictability, threat/abuse, deprivation/neglect, and low socioeconomic status. Parents reported on child impulsivity, emotion dysregulation, and overeating. Height and weight were self-reported and measured at 32 and 37 years in MLSRA and at 15 years in FFCWS. FFCWS results indicated that threat, deprivation, and low socioeconomic status predicted greater impulsivity and emotion dysregulation at 5 years, which in turn predicted greater overeating at 9 years and higher BMI z-score at 15 years. Early unpredictability in FFCWS predicted higher BMI through greater impulsivity but not emotion dysregulation at age 5. MLSRA regression results replicated the threat/abuse → emotion dysregulation → overeating → higher BMI pathway. These findings suggest that different dimensions of early adversity may follow both similar and unique pathways to predict BMI.

Two key processes in romantic relationships-power and dominance-can contribute to relationship disruption, but the association between these variables is complex. Elucidating the association between power and dominance during the COVID-19 pandemic is particularly important given the economic, social, and health-related stressors that pose a risk to relationship health. We examined associations between power, stress, and dominance by recruiting 1813 participants to complete an initial online survey at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were contacted 10 and 22 months later to complete follow-up surveys. Results revealed two main effects: individuals who had greater relationship power and experienced more COVID-19-related stressors than other people engaged in more dominance behaviors. A significant curvilinear effect revealed that at low levels of power, power was not associated with dominance behaviors. However, once power surpassed low levels, individuals with more power engaged in more dominance behaviors. Finally, people engaged in more dominance behaviors when they experienced more power and stress compared to their own average (i.e., within-person effects) during the pandemic. Implications for theories of power, dominance, and relationship disruption and distress are discussed.