Sara B. Algoe’s research while affiliated with University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and other places

Interparental interactions have an important influence on child well-being and development. Yet prior theory and research have primarily focused on interparental conflict as contributing to child maladjustment, which leaves out the critical question of how interparental positive interactions—such as expressed gratitude, capitalization, and shared laughter—may benefit child growth and development. In this article, we integrate theory and research in family, relationship, and affective science to propose a new framework for understanding how the heretofore underexamined positive interparental interactions influence children: interparental positivity spillover theory (IPST). IPST proposes that, distinct from the influence of conflict, interparental positive interactions spill over into children’s experiences in the form of their (a) experience of positive emotions, (b) beneficially altered perceptions of their parents, and (c) emulation of their parents’ positive interpersonal behaviors. This spillover is theorized to promote beneficial cognitive, behavioral, social, and physiological outcomes in children in the short term (i.e., immediately after a specific episode of interparental positivity, or on a given day) as well as cumulatively across time. As a framework, IPST generates a host of novel and testable predictions to guide future research, all of which have important implications for the mental health, well-being, and positive development of children and families.

Relatively little is known about how commitment manifests in couples’ everyday lives in a way that orients couples toward their future together. Building on the Investment Model of Commitment, we propose that, in everyday life, individuals with high levels of commitment are more likely to (a) assure their partners about the future of the relationship and (b) behaviorally invest in that future by spending more time in the partner’s presence. Results from a sample of individuals ( N = 100) suggest that relationship commitment is associated with greater time investment in the relationship (i.e., time spent with the partner in daily life); results from a second sample of couple members ( N = 269) replicate this effect and suggest that relationship commitment is associated with the use of daily assurances, which mediate the relationship between commitment and time spent co-present with the partner.

Gratitude for another person’s actions has received exponential attention from the scientific community for its many benefits. Yet, this research is virtually silent on one key target of gratitude – god – despite billions of people believing in a personal, intervening, and benevolent god. In a large multi-method study, we sampled U.S. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christians (N = 1270). First, we document the prevalence of spontaneous mentions of god as the target of a gratitude expression following a personal success. Only 16% of our religious participants did mention god but priming god increased this number to 29%. Second, we document a wider array of eliciting situations of gratitude to god (GTG) compared to gratitude to another person (GTO) and particularly for broad good things in life that don’t have a clear agent. Finally, we document ways that GTG vs. GTO is demonstrated, suggesting that GTG sustains religious practice and builds morality.

We do not know what happens in initial interactions to spark platonic or romantic relationships. This requires data on relationships from their inception, tracked over time. Building on theory about relationship promotion, we identified three exemplar behaviors to test novel hypotheses about relationship development. When starting college, a greenhouse for relationship initiation, first-year undergraduates ( N = 143) reported initial interactions with potential friends and romantic partners, and then 129 of them reported back about those 591 people over the semester. As predicted, reports of each behavior—affectionate touch, shared laughter, and partner’s gratitude expression—were associated with immediate interest in affiliating with the new person, beyond their perceived warmth, competence, and attractiveness; theoretically derived social perceptual mechanisms explained these links. Critically, although not all potential connections blossomed into relationships, these behavioral precursors to relationship promotion predicted relationship development via post-interaction interest in affiliating. Findings are contextualized within attraction literature with implications for relationship development.

In basic psychological needs theory (BPNT), the separable constructs of need satisfaction and need frustration are theorized as pivotally related to psychopathology and broader aspects of well-being. The Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scales (BPNSFS; Chen et al., 2015) have rapidly emerged as the dominant self-report measure in the BPNT domain, with translated versions available in a wide range of languages and a plethora of versions adapted for specific populations and life contexts. Through (a) an extended conceptual discussion of the BPNSFS and (b) a collection of complementary data analyses in eight samples, we demonstrate that the BPNSFS probably does not validly measure need frustration. Most importantly, we conclude that the ostensible distinction between need frustration and need satisfaction in the BPNSFS is likely primarily a method artifact caused by different item keying directions, given the way the measure currently assesses the intended constructs. If so, then the use of the BPNSFS may be generating misleading conclusions, obstructing sound investigation of current BPNT. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Individual differences in attachment insecurity can have important implications for experiences of positive emotions. However, existing research on the link between attachment insecurity and positive emotional experiences has typically used a composite measure of positive emotions, overlooking the potential importance of differentiating discrete emotions. Method: We conducted a meta-analysis of ten cross-sectional samples (N = 3,215), examining how attachment insecurity is associated with self-reported frequency of experiencing positive emotions, with a distinction made between more social (i.e., love and gratitude) and less social (i.e., peace and awe or curiosity) positive emotions. Results: High (vs. low) levels of both attachment anxiety and avoidance were associated with less frequent experience of positive emotions regardless of their social relevance. When analyzing each emotion separately, we found that attachment anxiety showed negative relations to all emotions except gratitude. Attachment avoidance was negatively associated with all emotions, and the link was even stronger with love (vs. peace, awe, or curiosity). Additional analyses of daily diary data revealed that attachment anxiety and avoidance were also negatively associated with daily experiences of positive emotions, regardless of social relevance. Conclusion: Our results underscore the need to further investigate the mechanisms underlying insecure individuals' blunted positive emotional experiences.

Feeling powerful and desiring power, the “having” versus “wanting” psychological experiences of power, are often conflated within a single measurement dimension (e.g., ascendance, social influence, dominance, agentic extraversion, assertiveness, social boldness). Across six studies, employing multiple modes of assessment, we examine the differential associations of tendencies toward feeling powerful and desiring power with a range of interpersonal functioning variables. Feeling powerful was associated with more harmonious interpersonal tendencies (e.g., agreeableness, empathy), whereas desiring power was associated with less harmonious interpersonal tendencies (e.g., hostility, Machiavellianism). Nomological nets of a wide range of extant assessment measures (e.g., facets of extraversion and psychopathic personality) may be distorted due to the conflation of these two power constructs, with implications for many domains of research.