Personality strengths in romantic relationships: Measuring perceptions of benefits and costs and their impact on personal and relational well-being.

Three studies using samples of people in romantic relationships were conducted to create a new individual difference measure of partner strengths in couples. The 2 perceptions of partner strengths included (1) appreciation of their use and effectiveness and (2) recognition of costs associated with their use. Factor analyses supported 2-factors and we found that greater appreciation of partner strengths predicted greater relationship satisfaction, commitment, investment, intimacy, self-expansion, and support for goal pursuit; recognizing significant costs with partner strengths was inversely related to several outcomes. Using a 1-week daily diary, we found that appreciation of partner strength use and recognition of costs associated with these strengths predicted daily relationship satisfaction and whether basic psychological needs were met within the relationship. The explanatory power of partner strength perceptions could not be explained by the actual character strengths or Big Five personality traits of partners, support for positive self-disclosures (capitalization), or gratitude for relationship partners. Finally, we found that the relational consequences of partner strength perceptions were not just "in the head" of the perceiver-influencing partner relational outcomes. This research program provides evidence for the use of a new measure of how strengths are perceived to better understand romantic couples and aspirational targets in clinical interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record

Personality Strengths as Resilience: A One-Year Multiwave Study.

We examined how personality strengths prospectively predict reactions to negative life events. Participants were 797 community adults from 42 countries. At five points over the course of 1 year, participants completed a series of questionnaires measuring seven personality strengths (hope, grit, meaning in life, curiosity, gratitude, control beliefs, and use of strengths), subjective well-being, and frequency and severity of negative life events. Using hierarchical linear modeling with assessment periods nested within participants, results from lagged analyses found that only hope emerged as a resilience factor. To illustrate the importance of using appropriate lagged analyses in resilience research, we ran nonlagged analyses; these results suggest that all seven personality strengths moderated the effect of negative life events on subjective well-being, with greater strengths associated with healthier outcomes. To provide evidence that personality strengths confer resilience, a prospective examination is needed with the inclusion of events and responses to them. The use of concurrent methodologies and analyses, which is the norm in psychology, often leads to erroneous conclusions. Hope, the ability to generate routes to reach goals and the motivation to use those routes, was shown to be particularly important in promoting resilience.

Family environment as a moderator of the association between anxiety and suicidal ideation.

The present study examined associations among anxiety symptoms, anxiety disorder diagnoses, perceptions of family support and conflict, and suicidal ideation (SI) in a clinical sample of psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents. Participants were 185 adolescents (72% female; 84% white, mean age=15.02years, SD=1.33) hospitalized on an acute psychiatric inpatient unit. Results indicated that anxiety disorders and symptoms were positively associated with SI, even after controlling for mood disorder diagnoses and sex. Moreover, this relationship was stronger among youth who reported lower (versus higher) levels of family support. Family conflict was positively associated with SI but did not moderate the relationship between anxiety and SI. Results suggest that family support may represent an important intervention target to decrease suicide risk among anxious youth. Integrating positive parenting techniques (e.g., attending to positive behaviors, providing praise, emotion coaching) and effective parent-child communication into treatment with anxious youth may help achieve this aim.

Perceived responsiveness during an initial social interaction with a stranger predicts a positive memory bias one week later.

Prior research has found that perceiving positive responses from others following self-disclosures enhances social bonds and plays a role in the maintenance of romantic relationships. We sought to extend this effect by exploring perceived responsiveness to good news in the context of initial social interactions with a stranger. In this study, unacquainted college students (n = 106) participated in a 45-minute semi-structured social interaction, and information on their emotions and behaviours was collected immediately after and one week later. We found that the receipt of supportive reactions to self-disclosure attempts during the social interaction was associated with immediate positivity and a more positive memory of the event (remembered enjoyment and positive emotions) one week later. This effect could not be attributed to how positively the event was experienced immediately afterwards, suggesting that perceived responsiveness during an initial social interaction facilitates a positive memory bias. These results offer new insights into how friendships might develop and be maintained.

Relationships between meaning in life, social and achievement events, and positive and negative affect in daily life.

Research on meaning in life has generally focused on global meaning judgments. This study examined how people's daily experiences, represented by events that occur in daily life, influence their perceived sense of meaning on a daily basis. One hundred sixty-two college students completed daily reports for 2 weeks. We examined the relationships among daily social and achievement events, daily positive and negative affect, and daily meaning in life. In addition, we tested the possible moderating influence of depressive symptoms on these relationships. Positive daily social and achievement events were related to greater daily meaning, above and beyond the contributions of daily positive and negative affect. Negative social and achievement events were related to less daily meaning, and negative achievement events covaried with daily meaning above and beyond positive and negative affect. Depression moderated the relationships between positive events and meaning, such that people who reported more depressive symptoms had greater increases in daily meaning in response to positive social and achievement events than individuals who reported fewer symptoms. These findings suggest the important role that daily events may play in fluctuations in people's affective experiences and sense of meaning in life.

Experiential avoidance and well-being: a daily diary analysis.

Experiential avoidance (EA) is a regulatory strategy characterised by efforts to control or avoid unpleasant thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations. Most studies of EA have used trait measures without considering the effects of EA on psychological functioning in naturalistic settings. To address this gap, we used daily diary methodology to examine the influence of EA of anxiety on everyday well-being. For two weeks, 89 participants provided daily reports of EA, positive and negative affect, enjoyment of daily events and meaning in life (MIL). Daily EA predicted higher negative affect, lower positive affect, less enjoyment of daily events (exercising, eating food and listening to music) and less MIL. The effect of EA on positive affect was not accounted for by the amount of negative affect experienced. Our daily measure of EA was a stronger predictor of daily well-being than a traditional trait measure (The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire). Taken together, results offer insights into the adverse effects of EA on daily well-being and suggest that EA is a context-specific regulatory strategy that might be best captured using a state-dependent measure.

A contextual approach to experiential avoidance and social anxiety: evidence from an experimental interaction and daily interactions of people with social anxiety disorder.

Experiential avoidance (EA), the tendency to avoid internal, unwanted thoughts and feelings, is hypothesized to be a risk factor for social anxiety. Existing studies of experiential avoidance rely on trait measures with minimal contextual consideration. In two studies, we examined the association between experiential avoidance and anxiety within real-world social interactions. In the first study, we examined the effect of experiential avoidance on social anxiety in everyday life. For 2 weeks, 37 participants with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and 38 healthy controls provided reports of experiential avoidance and social anxiety symptoms during face-to-face social interactions. Results showed that momentary experiential avoidance was positively related to anxiety symptoms during social interactions and this effect was stronger among people with SAD. People low in EA showed greater sensitivity to the level of situational threat than high EA people. In the second study, we facilitated an initial encounter between strangers. Unlike Study 1, we experimentally created a social situation where there was either an opportunity for intimacy (self-disclosure conversation) or no such opportunity (small-talk conversation). Results showed that greater experiential avoidance during the self-disclosure conversation temporally preceded increases in social anxiety for the remainder of the interaction; no such effect was found in the small-talk conversation. Our findings provide insight into the association between experiential avoidance on social anxiety in laboratory and naturalistic settings, and demonstrate that the effect of EA depends upon level of social threat and opportunity.