Anita L. Vangelisti

The Cambridge handbook of personal relationships

The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships serves as a benchmark of the current state of scholarship in this dynamic field, synthesizing the extant theoretical and empirical literature, tracing its historical roots, and making recommendations for future directions. The volume addresses a broad range of established and emerging topics, including theoretical and methodological issues that influence the study of personal relationships; research and theory on relationship development; the nature and functions of personal relationships across the life span; individual differences and their influences on relationships; relationship processes such as cognition, emotion, and communication; relational qualities such as satisfaction and commitment; environmental influences on personal relationships; and maintenance and repair of relationships. The authors are experts from a variety of disciplines, including several subfields of psychology, communication, family studies, and sociology, who havemademajor contributions to the understanding of relationships.

Challenges in conceptualizing social support

Although research on social support has generated findings that are key to the study of social and personal relationships, scholars have yet to deal with a number of conceptual issues that affect how social support is defined and measured. Research on hurt feelings provides some interesting insights concerning the conceptualization of support. Based on this research, as well as a review of the literature on social support, the current article describes several issues that scholars ought to consider as they conceptualize, evaluate, and study social support processes.

Reactions to messages that hurt: The influence of relational contexts

Two studies tested the assumption that relational contexts affect the way people react to messages that hurt their feelings. In the first, the range of responses people have to hurtful messages was explored, and underlying dimensions reflecting the responses were identified. Participants’ reactions were characterized by three broad dimensions: active verbal responses (e.g., attacking the other, defending the self, asking for an explanation), acquiescent responses (e.g., crying, apologizing), and invulnerable responses (e.g., ignoring the message, laughing). Analyses indicated that people who felt extremely hurt tended to react more often by acquiescing than those who were less hurt. Abo, those who felt the impact of hurt on their relationship was relatively low responded more often with invulnerability than those who felt the impact was high. In the second study, the association between peoples reactions to hurt and the quality of their relationship with the person who hurt them was examined, as was the ...

Self-focused attention and public speaking anxiety

Abstract While there has been considerable concern for the assessment, correlates, and treatment of public speaking anxiety, little attention has been paid to why dispositional public speech anxiety detrimentally affects public speaking performances. In this study we test the notion that high public speaking anxiety is associated with excessive attention to self, leading to less effective public presentations. Results indicate that highly anxious speakers tend to pay less attention to their environments and have more negative, self-focused cognitions about their performances than low anxious speakers. This increase in attention to self is correlated with poorer speaking performances and lower self-evaluations.

Why Does It Hurt?: The Perceived Causes of Hurt Feelings

Research suggests that people’s explanations for their hurt feelings can influence how they feel and how they respond to others. Although the events and behaviors that elicit hurt have been examined, individuals’ beliefs about what made them feel hurt have not been explored. The current study extends existing research by investigating the causes that people associate with their hurt feelings. First, participants’ explanations for why a specific interaction hurt their feelings were examined; then, underlying dimensions characterizing people’s explanations for hurt were identified and associations with theoretically relevant outcomes were assessed. Results yielded eight factors characterizing the perceived causes of hurt feelings. Relational satisfaction and self-esteem were linked to the reasons people felt hurt. Individuals’ perceptions about the causes of their hurt feelings also were associated with the intensity of their feelings, their responses to being hurt, and their tendency to distance themselves from the person who hurt them.

Pre-Performance Concerns Associated with Public Speaking Anxiety.

In three studies the relationship between peoples public speaking anxiety and their construals of the public speaking experience were examined. In the first study, greater anxiety was associated with greater concern about evaluation, performance, and self‐related issues. Study 2 focused on peoples constructs about public speaking. Highly anxious individuals emphasized self‐oriented, negative constructs. In the final study, anxious people selected speech topics that were less familiar to them and reported less sensitivity to public discourse. While previous research on public speaking anxiety has typically examined the effects of the anxiety on performance, these studies suggest that the anxiety is also related to beliefs and concerns that play a major role in the preparation of speeches.

Stability and change in relationships

Part I. Actors: The Scaffolding of Stability and Change: 1. Change in relationship knowledge representations Paula R. Pietromonaco, Jean-Philippe Laurenceau and Lisa Feldman Barrett 2. Personality effects on personal relationships over the life span Jens B. Asendorpf 3. An intergenerational model of romantic relationship development Chalandra M. Bryant and Rand D. Conger 4. How relationships begin and end: a genetic perspective David T. Lykken Part II. Behaviors: The Processes of Stability and Change: 5. Serial arguing over the relational life course: antecedents and consequences Michael E. Roloff and Kristen Linnea Johnson 6. Communication, relationships concerns, and satisfaction in early marriage Patricia Noller and Judith A. Feeney 7. Sacrifice in romantic relationships: an exploration of relevant research and theory Sarah Whitton, Scott Stanley and Howard Markman 8. Stability and change in social relations: perspectives from gerontology and stress research David A. Chiriboga 9. What microanalysis of behavior in social situations can reveal about relationships across the life span Rebecca M. Warner 10. Developing a multifaceted view of change in relationships Ronald D. Rogge and Thomas N. Bradbury Part III. Contexts: The Social Environment for Stability and Change: 11. Social networks and change in personal relationships Susan Sprecher, Diane Felmlee, Terri L. Orbuch and Marion C. Willetts 12. Creating a context for change: integrative couple therapy Jennifer Wheeler and Andrew Christensen 13. Passionate love and sexual desire: cultural and historical perspectives Elaine Hatfield and Richard L. Rapson 14. Rules for responsive robots: using human interactions to build virtual interactions Joseph N. Cappella and Catherine Pelachaud.

Desire for change in one's partner as a predictor of the demand/withdraw pattern of marital communication

Even though the demand/withdraw pattern of marital communication has been implicated as a contributor to marital dissatisfaction and divorce, relatively little research has examined why couples engage in demand/withdraw. Why would individuals engage in this seemingly negative communication pattern? To investigate this issue, a study of married couples was conducted in which the association between spouses’ desire for change in their partner and couples’ demand/withdraw communication was examined. The results indicated that individuals’ desire for change in their partner was positively related to both husband demand/wife withdraw communication and wife demand/husband withdraw communication. This suggested that spouses’ desire for change was associated with them enacting both demanding and withdrawing communication. The link between desire for change and demand/withdraw seemed particularly strong for topics that were salient to the participants. The results imply that no current model of demand/withdraw suf...

Family portraits: Stories as standards for family relationships

Two studies were conducted to investigate the link between the themes of stories individuals feel describe their family and the way people evaluate their family relationships. Individuals described a story characterizing their own family and then re-told that story so that it reflected an ‘ideal’ family. The themes that emerged from these stories, as well as the discrepancies between the themes portrayed in the two stories, were examined. Findings indicated that the themes typifying people’s stories about their own family were associated with individuals’ family satisfaction. Stories reflecting care, togetherness, adaptability, reconstruction, and humorwere positively linked to satisfaction, whereas those portraying disregard, hostility, chaos, divergent values, and personality attributeswere negatively related to individuals’ feelings about their family. The themes characterizing people’s stories about what they saw as the ‘ideal’ family, by contrast, were unrelated to satisfaction. But, as expected, the discrepancies between many of the themes represented in people’s own family stories and those portrayed in their ‘ideal’ stories were associated with the way individuals felt about their family relationships. Furthermore, the way people perceived their own family stories was linked to their beliefs that, at some point, their own stories would change to become more like their ‘ideal’ stories.

Speech Anxiety Affects How People Prepare Speeches: A Protocol Analysis of the Preparation Processes of Speakers.

Why does public speaking anxiety lead people to present speeches of judged lower quality? Prior research suggests a number of variables that might detrimentally affect the performance of highly anxious speakers when they present speeches. But does speech anxiety affect only presentation behavior, or does it also affect the ways in which people prepare their speeches? Measures of public speaking anxiety, and most texts focusing on presentational speaking, assume that the anxietys effect is limited to performance. In the current study we examine this notion. Using a number of variables drawn from a conceptual model of the speech preparation process, we first find that the way people go about preparing their speeches is meaningfully associated with the quality of their presentation. Second, we discover that public speaking anxiety is significantly related to how people prepare speeches. People with high levels of speech anxiety engage in a variety of preparation actions that may limit the effectiveness of t...