Anne F. Merrill

Examining the Bidirectional Nature of Topic Avoidance and Relationship Dissatisfaction: The Moderating Role of Communication Skills

This study examined the bidirectional nature of the association between ones own topic avoidance and relationship dissatisfaction. It also explored how perceptions of a dating partners communication competence and ones own communication efficacy affect this association. Three hundred undergraduates tracked their topic avoidance with their dating partner over a two week period. The results provided modest support for the idea that the association between topic avoidance and dissatisfaction is bidirectional for women, but not men. In addition, for men and women, global dissatisfaction with their dating relationship was a stronger predictor of daily topic avoidance (than daily topic avoidance was of daily dissatisfaction). Initial global levels of relationship dissatisfaction predicted greater levels of topic avoidance and this effect was quite stable over time, particularly for women. The results also revealed that the perception of a partners communication incompetence was indirectly associated with increases in topic avoidance over time only because it affected ones communication efficacy. Finally, the results indicated that women who were highly efficacious were particularly dissatisfied by their topic avoidance over time.

Analyzing divorce from cultural and network approaches

Abstract Because of the high divorce rate and subsequent outpouring of research on divorce in the United States and other Westernized countries, divorce is often framed from an individualistic perspective as a process that is negotiated between two individuals – as ‘his and her divorce. ’A primary assumption is that the spouses negotiate what is best for them and their children, seemingly irrespective of extended kin or culture. This study provides a more complex understanding of the role of culture in the divorce process by examining divorce from culture and network theory approaches. Interviews with 60 Mexican Americans who experienced divorce are combined with the extant literature to illustrate how culture and social networks shape divorce decisions and behaviors. Five themes surfaced from the interviews: (1) power differentials and gender roles, (2) female collective empowerment, (3) social capital, network density, and family members as stakeholders, (4) family members as bridges of structural holes and (5) religion as culture and law.

‘Fractured communities’: uncertainty, stress, and (a lack of) communal coping in Palestinian refugee camps

ABSTRACT This study examined how communal coping reveals itself in Palestinian refugee camps and the conditions that promote or prevent its occurrence. Individual and dyadic interviews were conducted with 40 mothers and one of their adolescent children living in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The results revealed that communal coping existed within the mother–adolescent dyad to a certain extent, but was rare within the larger context of the refugee camps. While families and neighbors did not typically verbalize their hardships and actively cope with them as a group, there was often an implicit recognition that they were all experiencing the same uncertainty and stress. Acting upon their uncertainty as a collective, however, was greatly hampered by mistrust within and outside the camps, due to widespread violence, privacy violations, vying for scarce resources, and disloyalty. Parents and adolescents also engaged in protective buffering whereby they attempted to reduce the stress of the family by keeping stress and fears to themselves rather than communicating about them. Even though protective buffering helped the refugees cope with chronic uncertainty and maintain a sense of normalcy, it prevented them from acting upon the problem as a group. Finally, parents emphasized that the child’s education provided hope for the future. Practical implications are discussed.

The Impact of a Need for Closure and Support Quality on Verbal and Cognitive Brooding

This study examined whether a need for closure explains why people verbally brood and whether the support received when they verbally brood during a conversation reduces anxiety and cognitive brooding afterward. In two studies, friends came into the laboratory and were randomly assigned to be a subject or confederate. The confederate was trained to provide “good support” or “poor support” to the subject who talked about a stressor he or she could not stop thinking and talking about recently with that friend. The overall models suggested that individuals were more likely to verbally brood when they had a higher need for closure and were more likely to feel better and positively reframe the stressor when the friend was supportive rather than unsupportive, which reduced anxiety. However, if individuals did feel better and/or positively reframed their stressor, even if they received “poor support,” it reduced their anxiety. Finally, positive reframing of the stressor, rather than simply feeling better, helped subjects reduce their cognitive brooding 20 minutes after the conversation.