Self-determined relationship motives, commitment motivated cognition, and relationship maintenance processes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The purpose of this program of research was to explore commitment-motivated relationship maintenance processes and the motivational bases of commitment to romantic relationships. In regards to the former, I was primarily concerned with demonstrating that commitment impacts not only behavioural and cognitive relationship maintenance responses, but that it also affects basic perceptual processes in relationships. In regards to the latter, I was particularly interested in utilizing self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000) to distinguish between intrinsic and identified relationship motives by demonstrating that identified motives form the basis of commitment to romantic relationships and therefore promote relationship maintenance responses. Study 1 examined benign appraisals of partner transgressions as a commitment motivated relationship maintenance response. It also examined whether these appraisals mediate the established relationship between commitment and the relationship maintenance response termed accommodation. Commitment was associated with the discrepancy between participant severity ratings and that of objective raters for a reported partner transgression. Commitment predicted these benign appraisals more for objectively less severe transgressions. Although the commitment-accommodation association was replicated, benign appraisals did not mediate this relationship. Study 2 examined the potential explanatory power of applying self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000) to the context of romantic relationships. A large scale web survey and 6 month follow-up distinguished between intrinsic, identified, and introjected motives for being in a romantic relationship by determining their unique associations with relevant relationship characteristics, relationship maintenance responses (RMRs), and persistence. The results confirmed a crucial distinction between intrinsic and identified motives in that associations between intrinsic motives and RMRs were fully mediated by satisfaction but not commitment, whereas identified motives were not mediated by satisfaction and instead partially mediated by commitment. By contrast, introjected motives were negatively related to RMRs. However, both identified and introjected motives predicted persistence whereas intrinsic motives did not. Study 3 used an experience-sampling diary methodology to examine the impact of positive and negative relationship events on the well-being and relationship maintenance responses of individuals with intrinsic and identified motives. It was found that identified individuals exhibited positive relationship illusions and were buffered from the impact of negative events whereas intrinsically motivated individuals were not. Study 4 provided experimental evidence for the associations between the relationship motives and relationship maintaining cognitions and behaviours demonstrated in studies 2-3. This study showed that priming individuals with an identified motivation for being in their romantic relationship leads to greater self-partner integration (relative to individuals primed with intrinsic motives) and greater willingness to accommodate and sacrifice (as compared to those primed with introjected motives). In sum, the present studies have important implications for our ability to accurately predict relationship well-being, willingness to engage in relationship maintenance responses, and relationship persistence, as a function of both commitment and the relationship motives that form a basis for relationship commitment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".