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The theory of resilience and relational load was used to examine the impact of voting patterns in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on individuals’ romantic relationships. Married/cohabitating individuals ( N = 961) completed online surveys at three time points during the transition to the Trump Presidency. The results supported our emotional capital hypothesis in that ongoing relationship maintenance in one’s relationship predicted less stress about the Trump presidency, less conflict, less relational load, greater communal orientation, and greater relational resilience. The positive effect of ongoing relationship maintenance on these relational outcomes occurred regardless of how the partners voted. At the same time, voting differently than one’s partner was still stressful and negatively influenced these outcomes. The results also supported our relational load model, which found that differences in voting negatively affected individuals’ communal orientation and the degree to which they maintained their relationships, which fueled conflict and stress. This conflict and stress was associated with an increase in relational load and a decrease in relational resilience.

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This study examined whether relationship maintenance buffers the stress of balancing work and family. Sixty-two dual-earning couples and their adolescents completed surveys at the beginning and end of the week, recorded their stress throughout the week, and collected saliva on two consecutive days in the middle of the week. When mothers and fathers received more maintenance from each other and adolescents received more maintenance from their parents over the past month (T1), it was associated with a greater rise in cortisol awakening response. Greater maintenance received over the past month was also associated with lower interleukin-6 in adolescents and lower perceived stress during the week for fathers and adolescents. Finally, less maintenance the past month predicted greater conflict during the week for mothers, which predicted less satisfaction balancing work and family. Less maintenance over the past month and conflict during the week also predicted loneliness for both parents.

The range and capabilities of multiple new media require us to master paradoxical aspects of their uses and implications. Further, those same media may also come to master us, through those paradoxes. Based on prior literature, we develop a four-component taxonomy of sites of media mastery (technology, technology-use, social contexts, individual aspects). We apply and extend this framework to analyze summaries of focus group comments from students in a Norwegian and a US university about their experiences attempting to master computers and mobile phones. From these results we apply thematic analysis to identify five paradoxes associated with the use of these devices throughout the media mastery taxonomy as well as a tension between using media convergence or media comparison to master multiple new media.