The present research examines how the subjective time of relational memories is linked to present relationship satisfaction. We tested the hypothesis that satisfied (but not dissatisfied) partners would keep happy relational events subjectively close in time and relegate transgressions to the subjectively distant past (regardless of when those events actually occurred). We found support for our predictions in the context of romantic relationships (Study 1) and with any type of close other (e.g., friends, family members; Study 2). To better understand the implications of the subjective distancing pattern among highly satisfied versus dissatisfied partners, we examined the role of perceptions of event importance. We found that highly satisfied partners’ adaptive pattern of distancing mediates their tendency to ascribe continued importance to past relationship glories, while dismissing earlier relational disappointments as unimportant (Study 2). We then examined the causal impact of subjective time on importance and on subsequent relationship satisfaction by manipulating both event valence and perceptions of subjective distance (Study 3). People were more satisfied when happy relational events felt close and unhappy ones felt distant. This work sheds light on a reciprocal process whereby highly satisfied partners navigate the temporal landscape of their relational histories by retaining and valuing happy memories and by discarding the relevance of painful ones, which then maintains or boosts subsequent relationship satisfaction.
AydukO.KrossE. (2010). From a distance: Implications of spontaneous self-distancing for adaptive self-reflection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 809–829. doi:10.1037/a0019205
2.
BlaneyE. H. (1986). Affect and memory: A review. Psychological Bulletin, 99, 229–246.
3.
BroemerP.GrabowskiA.GebauerJ. E.ErmelO.DiehlM. (2008). How temporal distance from past selves influences self-perception. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 697–714. doi:10.1002/ejsp.469
4.
BuhrmesterM.KwangT.GoslingS. D. (2011). Amazon’s mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data?Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 3–5. doi:10.1177/1745691610393980
5.
CortesK.WilsonA. E. (2016). When slights beget slights: Attachment anxiety, subjective time, and intrusion of the relational past in the present. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 1693–1708. doi:10.1177/0146167216670606
6.
DayS. B.BartelsD. M. (2008). Representation over time: The effects of temporal distance on similarity. Cognition, 106, 1504–1513. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.05.013
7.
EastwickP. W.FinkelE. J.EaglyA. H. (2011). When and why do ideal partner preferences affect the process of initiating and maintaining romantic relationships?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 1012–1032. doi:10.1037/a0024062
8.
EibachR. P.LibbyL. K.GilovichT. (2003). When change in the self is mistaken for change in the world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 917–931. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.5.917
9.
EndoY.HeineS. J.LehmanD. R. (2000). Culture and positive illusions in close relationships: How my relationships are better than yours. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1571–1586. doi:10.1177/01461672002612011
10.
FinkelE. J.RusbultC. E.KumashiroM.HannonP. A. (2002). Dealing with betrayal in close relationships: Does commitment promote forgiveness?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 956–974.
11.
FletcherG. J. O.SimpsonJ. A.ThomasG. (2000). The measurement of perceived relationship quality components: A confirmatory factor analytic approach. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 340–354. doi:10.1177/0146167200265007
12.
GottmanJ. M. (1994). What predicts divorce?Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
13.
HaddockG. (2004). Temporal self-appraisal and attributional focus. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 787–794.
14.
Holtzworth-MunroeA.JacobsonN. S. (1985). Causal attributions of married couples: When do they search for causes? What do they conclude when they do?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 398–412. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.48.6.1398
15.
HowellD. C. (2007). Statistical methods for psychology (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
16.
JohnsonD. J.RusbultC. E. (1989). Resisting temptation: Devaluation of alternative partners as a means of maintaining commitment in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 967–980.
17.
JoseA.RajaramS.O’LearyK. D.WilliamsM. C. (2010). Memory for partner-related stimuli: Free recall and frequency estimation. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 27, 658–670.
18.
KarneyB. R.CoombsR. H. (2000). Memory bias in long-term close relationships: Consistency or improvement?Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 959–970. doi:10.1177/01461672002610006
19.
LemayJr., E. P.NealA. M. (2013). The wishful memory of interpersonal responsiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 653–672.
20.
LuchiesL. B.WieselquistJ.RusbultC. E.KumashiroM.EastwickP. W.CoolsenM. K.FinkelE. J. (2013). Trust and biased memory of transgressions in romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 673–694.
21.
McCulloughM. E. (2001). Forgiving. In SnyderC. R. (Ed.), Coping with stress: Effective people and processes (pp. 93–113). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
22.
McCulloughM. E.ChrisK.SandageS. J.WorthingtonJr., E. L.BrownS. W.HightT. L. (1998). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships: II. Theoretical elaboration and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1586–1603.
23.
McFarlandC.RossM. (1987). The relation between current impressions and memories of self and dating partners. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 13, 228–238. doi:10.1177/0146167287132008
24.
McNultyJ. K.FinchmanF. D. (2012). Beyond positive psychology? Toward a contextual view of psychological processes and well-being. American Psychologist, 67, 101–110.
25.
MillerP. J. E.RempelJ. K. (2004). Trust and partner-enhancing attribution in close relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 6, 695–705. doi:10.1177/0146167203262803
26.
MurrayS. L.HolmesJ. G. (1993). Seeing virtues in faults: Negativity and the transformation of interpersonal narratives in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 707–722. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.65.4.707
27.
MurrayS. L.HolmesJ. G. (1994). Storytelling in close relationships: The construction of confidence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 650–663. doi:10.1177/0146167294206004
28.
MurrayS. L.HolmesJ. G.GriffinD. W. (1996a). The self-fulfilling nature of positive illusions in romantic relationships: Love is not blind, but prescient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 1155–1180. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.71.6.1155
29.
MurrayS. L.HolmesJ. G.GriffinD. W. (1996b). The benefits of positive illusions: Idealization and the construction of satisfaction in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 79–98.
30.
MurrayS. L.HolmesJ. G.MacDonaldG.EllsworthP. C. (1998). Through the looking glass darkly? When self-doubts turn into relationship insecurities. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1459–1480.
31.
NollerP.FeeneyJ. A.BonnellD.CallanV. J. (1994). A longitudinal study of conflict in early marriage. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 11, 233–252. doi:10.1177/0265407594112005
32.
PreacherK. J.HayesA. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 879–891. doi:10.3758/BRM.40.3.879
33.
RitchieT. D.SkowronskiJ. J.WoodS. E.WalkerW. R.VoglR. J.GibbonsJ. A. (2006). Event self-importance, event rehearsal, and the fading affect bias in autobiographical memory. Self and Identity, 5, 172–195. doi:10.1080/15298860600591222
34.
RossM.WilsonA. E. (2002). It feels like yesterday: Self-esteem, valence of personal past experiences, and judgments of subjective distance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 792–803. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.82.5.792
35.
RossM.WilsonA. E. (2003). Autobiographical memory and conceptions of self: Getting better all the time. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 66–69. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.01228
36.
SiedleckaE.CapperM. M.DensonT. F. (2015). Negative emotional events that people ruminate about feel closer in time. PloS One, 10, e0117105. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0117105
SimpsonJ. A.GangestadS. W.LermaM. (1990). Perception of physical attractiveness: Mechanisms involved in the maintenance of romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1192–1201.
39.
SpencerS. J.ZannaM. P.FongG. T. (2005). Establishing a causal chain: Why experiments are often more effective than mediational analyses in examining psychological processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 845–851.
40.
SprecherS. (1999). “I love you more today than yesterday”: Romantic partners’ perceptions of changes in love and related affect over time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 46–53.
41.
Van BovenL.CarusoE. M. (2015). The tripartite foundations of temporal psychological distance: Metaphors, ecology, and teleology. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 9, 593–605.
42.
Van BovenL.KaneJ.McGrawA. P.DaleJ. (2010). Feeling close: Emotional intensity reduces perceived psychological distance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 872–885. doi:10.1037/a0019262
43.
WilliamsS. L.WilsonA. E. (2016). (Subjective) time heals all wounds: The competing roles of objective and subjective time in romantic relationships. Biennial Conference of the International Association for Relationship Research, Toronto, ON, Canada.
44.
WilsonA. E.BuehlerR.LawfordH.SchmidtC.YongA. G. (2012). Basking in projected glory: The role of subjective temporal distance in future self-appraisal. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 342–353. doi:10.1002/ejsp.1863
45.
WilsonA. E.GunnG. R.RossM. (2009). The role of subjective time in identity regulation. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23, 1164–1178. doi:10.1002/acp.1617
46.
WilsonA. E.RossM. (2003). The identity function of autobiographical memory: Time is on our side. Memory, 11, 137–149. doi:10.1080/741938210
47.
WohlM. J. A.McGrathA. L. (2007). The perception of time heals all wounds: Temporal distance affects willingness to forgive following an interpersonal transgression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1023–1035. doi:10.1177/0146167207301021
48.
WorthingtonE. L.JrWadeN. G. (1999). The psychology of unforgiveness and forgiveness and implications for clinical practice. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 18, 385–418. doi:10.1521/jscp.1999.18.4.385
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
