Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Romantic breakups are a significant source of stress and associated with a range of poor outcomes. This report investigated whether participating in a measurement-intensive study of coping alters the course of breakup-related recovery. Recently separated young adults (N = 210) were assigned to complete either four visits involving multimethod assessments over 9 weeks (measurement-intensive condition, n = 120) or only intake and exit assessments during the same period (pre–post condition, n = 90). Participants in the measurement-intensive condition reported larger decreases in self-concept disturbance over time; no other main effects were observed based on condition. Improvement in self-concept clarity (for people in the measurement-intensive condition) explained decreases in breakup-related emotional intrusion, loneliness, and the use of first-person plural words when describing the separation. This study highlights the importance of self-concept reorganization following a breakup and suggests that research assessing coping can effect change without creating explicit expectations of doing so.

Keywords

romantic breakups stress self-concept clarity coping measurement reactivity

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Agnew

C. R.

Van Lange

P. A. M.

Rusbult

C. E.

Langston

C. A.

(1998). Cognitive interdependence: Commitment and the mental representations of close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 939–954.

Asarnow

Baraff

L. J.

Berk

Grob

Devich-Navarro

Suddath

… Tang

(2008). Pediatric emergency department suicidal patients: Two-site evaluation of suicide ideators, single attempters, and repeat attempters. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 47, 958–966.

Baumeister

R. F.

Wotman

S. R.

(1992). Breaking hearts: The two sides of unrequited love. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Blackburn

Brody

LeFebvre

(2014). The I’s, we’s, and she/he’s of breakups: Public and private pronoun usage in relationship dissolution accounts. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 33, 202–213.

Boals

Klein

(2005). Word use in emotional narratives about failed romantic relationships and subsequent mental health. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 24, 252–268.

Boot

W. R.

Simons

D. J.

Stothart

Stutts

(2013). The pervasive problem with placebos in psychology why active control groups are not sufficient to rule out placebo effects. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 445–454.

Borelli

J. L.

Sbarra

D. A.

(2011). Trauma history and linguistic self-focus moderate the course of psychological adjustment to divorce. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 30, 667–698.

Broderick

J. E.

Vikingstad

(2008). Frequent assessment of negative symptoms does not induce depressed mood. Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, 15, 296–300.

Conner

T. S.

Reid

K. A.

(2012). Effects of intensive mobile happiness reporting in daily life. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 315–323.

10.

Hayes

A. F.

(2012). PROCESS: A versatile computational tool for observed variable mediation, moderation, and conditional process modeling. Retrieved from http://www.afhayes.com/public/process2012.pdf

11.

Heisenberg

(1960). The representation of nature in contemporary Physics. In May

(Ed.), Symbolism in religion and literature (pp. 215–232). New York, NY: George Braziller.

12.

Henderson

Byrne

D. G.

Duncan-Jones

(1981). Neurosis and the social environment. Sydney, Australia: Academic Press.

13.

Hughes

M. E.

Waite

L. J.

Hawkley

L. C.

Cacioppo

J. T.

(2004). A short scale for measuring loneliness in large surveys. Research on Aging, 26, 655–672.

14.

Knowles

E. D.

Wearing

J. R.

Campos

(2011). Culture and the health benefits of expressive writing. Social Psychological And Personality Science, 2, 408–415.

15.

Lee

L. A.

Sbarra

D. A.

Mason

A. E.

Law

R. W.

(2011). Attachment anxiety, verbal immediacy, and blood pressure: Results from a laboratory analog study following marital separation. Personal Relationships, 18, 285–301.

16.

Lewandowski

G. W.

Jr Bizzoco

N. M.

(2007). Addition through subtraction: Growth following the dissolution of a low quality relationship. Journal of Positive Psychology, 2, 40–54.

17.

Little

Yau

(1996). Intent-to-treat analysis for longitudinal studies with drop-outs. Biometrics, 52, 1324–1333.

18.

Longwell

Truax

(2005). The differential effects of weekly, monthly, and bimonthly administrations of the Beck depression inventory-II: Psychometric properties and clinical implications. Behavior Therapy, 36, 265–275.

19.

Mason

A. E.

Law

R. W.

Bryan

A. E. B.

Portley

R. M.

Sbarra

D. A.

(2011). Facing a breakup: Electromyographic responses moderate self-concept recovery following a romantic separation. Personal Relationships, 19, 551–568.

20.

Miller

G. A.

Chapman

J. P.

(2001). Misunderstanding analysis of covariance. Journal Of Abnormal Psychology, 110, 40–48.

21.

Monroe

S. M.

Rohde

Seeley

J. R.

Lewinsohn

P. M.

(1999). Life events and depression in adolescence: Relationship loss as a prospective risk factor for first onset of major depressive disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108, 606–614.

22.

O’Rourke

H. P.

MacKinnon

D. P.

(2014). When the test of mediation is more powerful than the test of the total effect. Behavior Research Methods, 1–19.Online First Publication, June 4, 2014. doi:10.3758/s13428-014-0481-z

23.

Pennebaker

J. W.

(2011). The secret life of pronouns. New Scientist, 211, 42–45.

24.

Pennebaker

J. W.

Booth

R. J.

Francis

M. E.

(2007). Linguistic inquiry and word count: LIWC [Computer software]. Austin, TX: liwc. net.

25.

Pennebaker

J. W.

Mayne

T. J.

Francis

M. E.

(1997). Linguistic predictors of adaptive bereavement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 863–871.

26.

Rohrbaugh

M. J.

Mehl

M. R.

Shoham

Reilly

E. S.

Ewy

G. A.

(2008). Prognostic significance of spouse we talk in couples coping with heart failure. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76, 781–789. doi:10.1037/a0013238

27.

Rubin

D. B.

(1987). Multiple imputation for nonresponse surveys. New York, NY: Wiley.

28.

Schafer

J. L.

(1997). Analysis of incomplete multivariate data. London, England: Chapman & Hall.

29.

Sharpe

J. P.

Gilbert

D. G.

(1998). Effects of repeated administration of the Beck depression inventory and other measures of negative mood states. Personality and Individual Differences, 24, 457–463.

30.

Shrout

P. E.

Bolger

(2002). Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: New procedures and recommendations. Psychological Methods, 7, 422–445.

31.

Slotter

E. B.

Gardner

W. L.

Finkel

E. J.

(2010). Who am I without you? The influence of romantic breakup on the self-concept. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 147–160.

32.

Ullrich

P. M.

Lutgendorf

S. K.

(2002). Journaling about stressful events: Effects of cognitive processing and emotional expression. Annals Of Behavioral Medicine, 24, 244–250.

33.

Weiss

D. S.

Marmar

C. R.

(1997). The impact of event scale—Revised. In Wilson

Keane

(Eds.), Assessing psychological trauma and PTSD (pp. 399–411). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

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.

0.43 MB

0.00 MB

Participating in Research on Romantic Breakups Promotes Emotional Recovery via Changes in Self-Concept Clarity

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material