What if your partner…? A situated decision-making approach to romantic competence in young adulthood

Aligning the self and reaping the benefits: Ego effectiveness in romantic relationships

“…To quantify effectiveness knowledge, we used a proportion consensus scoring system of the type detailed in Persich et al. (2020), using the effectiveness norms collected by Robinson et al (in press‐b). Using this system, individuals receiving a score of 0.2000 or below could be said to possess no effectiveness knowledge.…”

“…Ineffective actions tend to be immature (e.g., getting a Tinder account to get back at a partner acting similarly), retaliation‐oriented, or avoidant, while effective actions tend to be mature, accommodating, and/or directly focused on the problem at hand (e.g., initiating a frank discussion in the case of serious relationship issues). Regardless, there are many ways in which such dynamics play out across the scenarios, which therefore provide a rich source of insights into idealized relationship functioning (Robinson et al, in press‐b).…”

“…We developed a way of assessing ego effectiveness in romantic relationships using materials created by Robinson, Penzel, and Persich (in press‐b), who had written scenarios involving potential threats, dilemmas, or challenges in romantic relationships (e.g., “Henry has a partner who gets angry too often”). Each of the 10 scenarios ultimately chosen (involving different lifestyle preferences, dislike of the partner's best friend, a partner who gets angry too often, a lack of communication, dissatisfaction with birth control methods, the desire for more frequent sex, suspicion, a partner's flirting with others, a partner's possible infidelity, and a potentially serious problem in the relationship) is paired with 4 potential ways of responding to the issues involved (e.g., in the Henry situation, “suggest anger management classes”, “get angry in return”, “be careful not to anger his partner”, & “ignore her when she gets angry”).…”

Five Approaches to Understanding Interpersonal Competence: A Review and Integration

“…Rather than highlighting these efforts, though, we will highlight a recent attempt to create an implicit assessment for the secure attachment style. This SJT started with a series of romantic relationship scenarios (Robinson, Penzel, & Persich, 2020) and participants were asked what they would do in the largely problematic or uncertain situations involving themselves and a romantic partner. A key innovation was that each way of responding to each situation was given an expert rating of attachment security and participant endorsements were correlated with this prototype (Robinson, Persich, Towers, Sjoblom-Schmidt, & Penzel, 2021).…”