Partner‐AMP and well‐being: Evidence for an implicit secure base script?

Abstract

The current research presents an adapted Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) to assess the aspects of the relational schema of romantic partners that are difficult to verbalize and tests the prediction that a positive implicit image of the partner constitutes a psychological resource that increases well-being. In Study 1, the partner-AMP predicted well-being in student participants even after controlling for explicit partner attitudes and socially desirable responding. In Study 2, the partner-AMP was assessed in women with a recent history of physical abuse and a control group. As expected, the partner-AMP was related to group membership and predicted well-being over and above explicit partner attitudes and battering experience. The results are compatible with the notion of an implicit secure base schema.One of the most fundamental constructs of relationship psychology is the mental representation of the relationship, which has been named the "internal working model" in attachment theory (Bowlby, 1973) and the "relational schema" (Baldwin, 1992) in the more recent relationship psychology anchored in social cognition. The relational schema consists of the relationship-specific mental representation of the self, the relationship partner, and the if-then contingencies characterizing their interaction. Standard self-report measures of relationship quality (e.g., adult

Implicit and explicit attitudes toward ex‐partners differentially predict breakup adjustment

“…To create idiographic stimuli for the indirect measure (AMP; Banse et al, 2010), participants received a form listing 11 categories of person attributes: first name, family name, hair color, eye color, profession, car, sport, hobby, favorite music, typical drink, and typical trait. To generate stimuli relating to their ex‐partner (ex‐partner primes), participants were asked to supply the first name and four additional relevant attributes for those categories that they most strongly associated with the ex‐partner.…”

“…Previous research has identified positive implicit and explicit attitudes toward the current partner to be related to greater life satisfaction (Banse & Kowalick, 2007; Banse et al, 2010). In contrast, implicitly hanging on to an ex‐partner may contribute to misery, as continued attachment to an ex‐partner is problematic for postbreakup adjustment (Frazier & Cook, 1993).…”

“…Particularly for those who have not found a new partner, positive implicit attitudes toward ex‐partners are assumed to be detrimental to life satisfaction. As a measure of implicit attitudes toward ex‐partners, we used the AMP (Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005) because it has been shown to be more sensitive than the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) for tapping into the influence of implicit attitudes about partners on well‐being (Banse et al, 2010).…”

“…Implicit attitudes toward the partner have been proposed as a proxy for automatically activated relational schemas (Banse & Kowalick, 2007; LeBel & Campbell, 2009), and previous research has demonstrated that implicit partner attitudes show incremental validity over and above explicit attitudes and social desirability in explaining general well‐being under stress (Banse & Kowalick, 2007) or even under normal life conditions (Banse et al, 2010). However, very little is known about the effects of implicit partner attitudes when romantic relationships end.…”

“…Baldwin (1992) described relational schemas as representations of the self, the partner, and the relationship that are associatively linked. They can be either declarative or nondeclarative, the latter reflecting the automatic components that previous research tried to assess using latency‐based methods such as affective priming (Banse, 1999), implicit association tests (Banse & Kowalick, 2007; Zayas & Shoda, 2005), or the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Banse et al, 2010). Previous studies converge in their finding that positive implicit attitudes toward the romantic partner are positively related to well‐being and life satisfaction.…”