Adolescents' Sexual Encounters With Either Romantic or Casual Partners and the Quality of Their Romantic Relationships Four Years Later.

Adolescent sexual behavior was examined within a health perspective. Assuming a developmental perspective, the current study investigated the associations between sexual behavior in either stable relationships or in casual encounters, and the quality of romantic relationships and affect 4 years later. Data were collected from 144 Israeli adolescents aged 16-18 years (mean age 16.57 years). Participants completed diary data over a period of 10 days and reported on the quality of their romantic encounters and their emotions, and on their sexual behavior in stable relationships or casual encounters. Four years later, they were asked to complete diary data again for 10 consecutive days and report on the quality of their romantic relationships and their positive and negative affect. Findings indicate that involvement in sexual behavior in stable romantic relationships was associated only with future romantic partner support. In contrast, earlier involvement in casual sexual behavior was associated with a number of future indices: lower partner support, greater negative affect as well as greater relationship tension, and dyadic hurtful behavior 4 years later. The differential role of sexuality within a stable relationship or casual encounters among adolescents for their future romantic development is discussed within a developmental framework.

Predicting post-breakup distress and growth in emerging adulthood: The roles of relationship satisfaction and emotion regulation.

With a sample of emerging adults (N = 110; 72% female) this brief report utilized self-report measures to examine the role of relationship satisfaction and emotion regulation strategies assessed at age 20 in predicting breakup distress and posttraumatic growth three years later. Results showed that higher relationship satisfaction is associated with less future breakup distress. Emotion regulation explained the ways individuals cope with distress; cognitive appraisal (in contrast to emotional suppression) predicted higher growth after experiencing a breakup. Findings highlight the ways emotion regulation strategies can help emerging adults cope with relational stressors such as breakups.

Changes in rejection sensitivity across adolescence and emerging adulthood: Associations with relationship involvement, quality, and coping.

Using a sample of 110 Israeli youth (72% female), the present study investigates associations between initial levels of rejection sensitivity as well as changes in rejection sensitivity from age 16 to age 23 and relationship involvement, quality, and (growth following) coping with relationship stress. Results showed that rejection sensitivity generally decreased over time into the transition to adulthood. Furthermore, levels of rejection sensitivity at age 16 predicted whether young people were romantically involved by age 23, as well as the quality of their relationships. Yet, the change in level of rejection sensitivity over time explained far more the quality of later romantic relationships and competence in coping with relationship stress than the initial level of rejection sensitivity. These findings have important implications for examining the role of changes in personality attributes such as rejection sensitivity in the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Betrayals in Emerging Adulthood: A Developmental Perspective of Infidelity.

Infidelity is associated with considerable distress and discord in dating relationships. The current mixed methods study examined both the written narratives and survey responses of 104 (59.6% women) emerging adults to investigate reasons for engaging in infidelity (i.e., sexual and emotional infidelity). Emerging adults' reasons for engaging in infidelity were attributed primarily to their primary relationships and/or their romantic partners not fulfilling their needs for interdependence and thus feeling motivated to fulfill these needs elsewhere. Although the majority of participants provided independence and/or interdependence reasons for their infidelity, a large proportion of responses (40%) referenced alternative reasons. These responses included (a) the opportunity to become intimate with an infidelity partner while under the influence of alcohol, (b) attraction to an infidelity partner, and (c) the excitement and novelty that the infidelity experience provided. Those who reported engaging in infidelity because of unmet interdependence needs, and intimacy needs in particular, were more avoidantly attached than those who did not reference unmet interdependence needs. Those who reported engaging in infidelity because of unmet independence needs were more anxiously attached than those who did not reference unmet independence needs. Implications for the developmental importance of infidelity in terms of research and applied work are discussed.

The Symbolic Nature of Trust in Heterosexual Adolescent Romantic Relationships.

Trust contributes to young people's capacity for sustaining current and future successful relationships. To date, research has yet to examine the meaning of trust in early dating relationships and reasons for its deterioration. The present study focused on video-recorded conversations about trust between 34 heterosexual adolescent couples in dating relationships living in the U.S. Transcripts from these conversations were qualitatively analyzed using thematic analysis to identify adolescents' meanings of trust and reasons they provided for a lack of trust in their romantic partners. All 34 couples identified concerns specifically related to infidelity. Six major themes for not trusting romantic partners emerged. Results suggested that the lack of trust in romantic relationships might stem from several areas that are directly and indirectly related to the current relationship, including low self-esteem, the experience of betrayal in past romantic relationships, partners' extradyadic behaviors, and gossip among peers. Importantly, peers can play a defining role in influencing young people's perceptions of their romantic partners and developing or sustaining trust in their romantic relationships.

Rejection sensitivity and depressive symptoms: Longitudinal actor-partner effects in adolescent romantic relationships.

The present study utilizes the actor-partner interdependence model to examine the longitudinal relationship between rejection sensitivity and one's own and one's partner's depressive symptoms. The sample included adolescent romantic couples from the U.S. (N = 198 adolescents; 50% girls; 90.2% Caucasian) whose rejection sensitivity at Time 1 and depressive symptoms approximately one year later (Time 2) were assessed. Additionally, aggressive behaviors and maintenance behaviors that commonly associated with rejection sensitivity (e.g., self-silencing) are explored as mediators. Results indicate that boyfriends' rejection sensitivity at Time 1 predicted girlfriends' depressive symptoms at Time 2. Additionally, girls' rejection sensitivity predicted their own and their boyfriends' self-silencing. Developmental and clinical implications are discussed.

Family enmeshment, adolescent emotional dysregulation, and the moderating role of gender.

Enmeshment plays a key role in many families' dysfunctional interactions and may be especially detrimental for adolescents. Sixty-four adolescents completed ratings of family enmeshment, perceived distress tolerance, an interpersonal challenge task, and mood ratings before and immediately after the task. Before and during the challenge task, adolescents' respiratory sinus arrhythmia (an indicator of cardiac vagal tone) was recorded. Associations were tested between adolescents' perceptions of family enmeshment and 3 aspects of adolescent emotional dysregulation. Adolescents who perceived higher family enmeshment also demonstrated greater emotional dysregulation in several domains: negative global appraisals of distress tolerance, stronger increase in subjective negative mood from baseline to postchallenge, lower baseline vagal tone, and vagal augmentation during the challenge task. Gender differences also emerged, such that girls reported more negative distress appraisals overall and enmeshed boys showed greater emotional dysregulation across analyses. Findings are discussed in terms of how clinicians may dynamically assess and treat enmeshment and emotional dysregulation in families with male and female adolescents.

Rejection sensitivity and adolescents' perceptions of romantic interactions.

Rejection sensitivity - the tendency to expect, perceive, and overreact to rejection by others - is linked with individuals' expectations that their romantic partners' behaviors have negative intent, even if, perhaps, such behaviors could be considered neutral when observed by another. The aim of the present study was to test this proposition, derived from rejection sensitivity theory, using a Video-Recall Procedure with adolescent couples in the US (N = 386 adolescents, 50% girls). We examined whether adolescents who were more sensitive to rejection perceived their romantic partners' behaviors as more conflictual than when viewed by trained, third-party observers. Findings suggest that, at the micro-analytic level, higher rejection sensitivity is associated with adolescents' heightened perception of their romantic partners as conflictual when compared to observers, who more often coded the same behaviors as neutral rather than conflictual. Implications for adolescent mental health and well-being are discussed.

Is sexual behavior healthy for adolescents? A conceptual framework for research on adolescent sexual behavior and physical, mental, and social health.

Although research has increasingly emphasized how adolescent sexual behavior may be associated with aspects of health beyond unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, no current theoretical or conceptual model fully explains associations between sexual behavior and multiple facets of health. We provide a conceptual model that explicates possible processes of how adolescent sexual behavior may influence physical, mental, and social health. Next, we review the current literature consistent with this conceptual model, demonstrating that although early sexual behavior can be associated with some negative outcomes, sex may be, on average, a positive experience in late adolescence. Finally, we discuss important future directions for research in these areas, including how individuals' attitudes about and perceptions of sexual behavior influence outcomes of sex.

Brief report: "I can't talk about it:" sexuality and self-silencing as interactive predictors of depressive symptoms in adolescent dating couples.

This longitudinal study examined sexual intercourse within adolescent romantic relationships as a couple-level moderator of the association between adolescent individual characteristics and depressive symptoms. Two hundred nine middle- and older-adolescent dating couples (aged 14-17 and 17-21, respectively) reported on their own self-silencing, depressive symptoms, and sexual behaviors. At Time 1, frequency of sexual intercourse significantly moderated the relationship between self-silencing and depressive symptoms, such that adolescents higher in self-silencing engaging in more frequent sex were at risk for clinically significant levels of depression. Adolescents who were low in self-silencing were not at increased risk for depression, regardless of frequency of sex. Self-silencing also significantly predicted increases in depressive symptoms from Time 1 to Time 2. Implications include the possibility that frequent sex in highly self-silencing adolescents exacerbates psychological depletion believed to link self-silencing to depressive symptoms, and that this depletion compounds over time.

Adolescents' relational schemas and their subjective understanding of romantic relationship interactions.

This study examines the association between adolescents' relational schemas and their subjective understanding of interactions in the context of male-female romantic relationships. We employed an innovative multimodal methodology: the video-recall system [Welsh, D. P., & Dickson, J. W. (2005). Video-recall procedures for examining subjective understanding in observational data. Journal of Family Psychology, 19(1), 62-71], which includes both adolescent participants' perspectives, as well as those of trained coders. Dyadic structural equation modeling (SEM) with latent variables was used to examine two dependent variables: Discomfort and Power. Relational schemas were only associated with the participants' interpretation of Discomfort, and did not differ by gender. The association between relational schemas and Power were different by gender, suggesting males and females with more vulnerable relational schemas may employ different strategies to cope with their insecurity. Males' relational schemas were also associated with the observers' interpretations of Power for both couple members. Possible implications of this finding for attachment theory and adolescent romantic relationships are discussed.

A process model of adolescents' triangulation into parents' marital conflict: the role of emotional reactivity.

This study examined adolescents' emotional reactivity to parents' marital conflict as a mediator of the association between triangulation and adolescents' internalizing problems in a sample of 2-parent families (N = 416)[corrected]. Four waves of annual, multiple-informant data were analyzed (youth ages 11-15 years). The authors used structural equation modeling and found that triangulation was associated with increases in adolescents' internalizing problems, controlling for marital hostility and adolescent externalizing problems. There also was an indirect pathway from triangulation to internalizing problems across time through youths' emotional reactivity. Moderating analyses indicated that the 2nd half of the pathway, the association between emotional reactivity and increased internalizing problems, characterized youth with lower levels of hopefulness and attachment to parents. The findings help detail why triangulation is a risk factor for adolescents' development and which youth will profit most from interventions focused on emotional regulation.

Adolescent romantic relationships.

In this article, we review theoretical and empirical advances in research on romantic relationships between age 10 and the early twenties. First, we describe key themes in this area of research. Next, we briefly characterize the most influential theoretical formulations and distinctive methodological issues. We then describe research findings regarding pertinent social and developmental processes. We summarize the extensive findings on relationships with parents and peers as a context for romantic relationships. Finally, we characterize the growing evidence that adolescent romantic relationships are significant for individual adjustment and development, and we note promising directions for further research.

Directly observed interaction within adolescent romantic relationships: What have we learned?

Review and conceptual analysis of the papers in this special issue calls attention to several important methodological and conceptual issues surrounding the direct observation of adolescent romantic couples. It also provides an important new foundation of knowledge about the nature of adolescents' romantic relationships. Connections with previous family relationships, new understandings of the distinctive nature of adolescent romantic relationships, and gender issues are clarified by this body of papers. Together, these papers move the scholarly field forward and generate new lines of questions for future investigators.

Empathic accuracy and adolescent romantic relationships.

Although theoretical insights suggest that empathic accuracy should emerge to play a role in adolescents' romantic relationships, the nature of any such role remains unknown. The current study examined whether empathic accuracy: (1) was developmentally based, (2) differed across gender, and (3) was associated with adolescents' satisfaction with their romantic relationships. Participants were 204 male-female couples who ranged between 14 and 21 years of age and had been dating between 4 weeks and 5 years. On average, both male and female adolescents showed high levels of empathic accuracy that were positively associated with their own and their partners' relationship satisfaction. However, the direction of the associations that emerged, and gender differences in them, depended in part on the type of information being perceived. For instance, while both males' and females' accuracy for discomfort and conflict were positively associated with partners' satisfaction, males'-but not females'-accuracy for connection was negatively associated with their satisfaction, and females'-but not males'-accuracy for persuasion was positively associated with partners' satisfaction. Empathic accuracy was not significantly associated with age or relationship length. Taken together, these results reveal that a complete picture of empathic accuracy requires research on perceptions of various types of information.

Sexual communication and contraceptive use in adolescent dating couples.

PURPOSE: This study had two aims: first, to examine the relationship between general sexual communication and contraceptive use in sexually active adolescent romantic couples, and second, to explore predictors of open communication from characteristics of adolescent couples and individual adolescents. METHODS: Data were drawn from 209 couples dating a minimum of four weeks who participated in the Study of Tennessee Adolescent Romantic Relationships. Seventy-three adolescent dating couples (ages 14-21 years) that engaged in sexual intercourse and completed a sexual communication questionnaire were included in current analyses. RESULTS: Nearly 30% of couples failed to use contraception at first intercourse and almost half of couples did not use contraception every time they had sex. More open communication about sex from both male and female partners was associated with increased contraceptive use. Additionally, adolescents who were more satisfied in their relationships reported more open communication about sex, and adolescent females who self-silenced reported less open communication about sex. Finally, mediation analyses revealed that boys' and girls' relationship satisfaction and girls' self-silencing indirectly predicted contraceptive use through their effects on general sexual communication. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first known study to address individual and dyadic components of sexual communication using reports from both members of established adolescent dating couples. Findings suggest that open sexual communication between intimate partners is important to sexual decision-making. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

No strings attached: the nature of casual sex in college students.

The purpose of this paper was to identify the circumstances associated with casual sex encounters, as well as to identify the link between casual sex, depressive symptoms, and infidelity among college students. We found that casual sex was a fairly common occurrence that was related to early sexual transition, engaging in first sex with a casual sex partner, drug use and alcohol consumption. Casual sex occurred more often between "friends" rather than with strangers. Depressive symptoms were associated with engaging in casual sex differently for males and females. Males who engaging in casual sex reported the fewest symptoms of depression and females who had a history of casual sex reported the most depressive symptoms. Frequencies of affectionate and genital behaviors were associated with expectations of the relationship, the relationship to the partner, infidelity, and the individual's relationship style. Results are discussed in light of evolutionary and socio-cultural theories of sexuality.

Video-recall procedures for examining subjective understanding in observational data.

Video-recall procedures allow researchers and clinicians to ascertain participants' subjective understanding of their interactions with significant others. The procedures involve recording participants' interactions and subsequently asking them to review the recorded interactions. The reviewing involves participants providing feedback about their perceptions of their interactions, behaviors, or experiences during the original interactions. Participants' subjective understandings can be contrasted with each other and with those of trained coders to examine shared and discrepant understandings and the differential predictive utility of interactional processes. In this article, the authors briefly review the literature on video-recall procedures, discuss their potential for application in a variety of areas in family psychology, and provide an analysis of current video-recall procedures. Finally, the authors present the Digital Video-Recall System as an example of current video-recall methodology.