A dynamic model of how trust regulates relationship promotion is proposed. The model assumes that trust has both impulsive (i.e., automatic attitude toward the partner) and reflective (i.e., beliefs about the partner's caring) forms. Because overriding evaluative impulses requires self-regulatory resources, the model further posits that self-regulatory capacity controls whether people strengthen relationship connections in the face of threats to reflective trust. Two experiments and 1 longitudinal daily diary study utilizing convergent manipulations and measures of self-regulatory capacity supported the model. Results revealed that acute uncertainty about a partner's caring increased relationship-promotive sentiment and behavior when (a) people lacked self-regulatory resources to question impulsively trusting sentiments and (b) when people had self-regulatory resources available to override impulsively distrusting sentiments. In contrast, acute uncertainty about a partner's caring decreased relationship-promotive sentiment and behavior when (a) people lacked the self-regulatory capacity to question impulsively distrusting sentiments and (b) when people had the self-regulatory capacity available to override impulsively trusting sentiments.
A model of the social-safety system is proposed to explain how people sustain a sense of safety in the relational world when they are not able to foresee the behavior of others. In this model, people can escape the acute anxiety posed by agents in their personal relational world behaving unexpectedly (e.g., spouse, child) by defensively imposing well-intentioned motivations on the agents controlling their sociopolitical relational world (e.g., President, Congress). Conversely, people can escape the acute anxiety posed by sociopolitical agents behaving unexpectedly by defensively imposing well-intentioned motivations on the agents controlling their personal relational world. Two daily diary studies, a longitudinal study of the 2018 midterm election, and a 3-year longitudinal study of newlyweds supported the hypotheses. On a daily basis, people who were less certain they could trust their romantic partner defended against acutely unforeseeable behavior in one relational world by affirming faith in the wellintentioned motivations of agents in the alternate world. Moreover, when people were more in the personal daily habit of finding safety in the alternate relational world in the face of the unexpected, those who were initially uncertain they could trust their romantic partner later evidenced greater comfort depending on their personal relationship partners.
The emotion of awe occurs when one feels small relative to something vaster than the self; it leads to benefits such as care for others. However, because awe elicits the experience of a "small self," it is unclear to what extent awe positively versus negatively affects responses to subsequent stressors. If personal obstacles seem trivial in comparison to awe-inspiring stimuli, stressors should seem either manageable or unimportant, but if one's capabilities seem comparatively insignificant, stressors should seem unmanageable. We hypothesized that awe would have a generally positive effect on responses during a subsequent performance stressor, but that this would further depend on whether people tended to spontaneously take on a selfdistanced versus self-immersed perspective. In the face of awe, focusing less on the self (selfdistanced perspective) should make obstacles in particular seem trivial, whereas focusing more on the self (self-immersed) should lead one's capabilities to seem insignificant. Using the biopsychosocial model of challenge/threat, we found that spontaneous self-distancing significantly moderated awe's effects on responses during a subsequent performance stressor (speech task): For participants who self-distanced, the awe condition led to cardiovascular responses consistent with greater challenge than the neutral control condition (reflecting evaluating the stressor as more manageable); for participants who self-immersed, awe predicted relative threat (less manageable stressor). There was no support for awe making people care less about the stressor (as reflected in cardiovascular responses consistent with task engagement).This offers insight into how awe can have divergent effects on people's experiences during performance stressors.
A model of meaning maintenance in relationships is proposed to explain how relationships function to regulate threats to shared systems of meaning posed by life's capricious and unexpected events. This model assumes that people flexibility compensate for unexpected events in the world by affirming the expected in their relationship and compensate for unexpected events in the relationship by affirming the expected in the world. Supportive evidence is reviewed that reveals how people in more or less satisfying relationships flexibly maintain a sense of life's meaning in the face of unexpected events.
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