Andrew M Ledbetter
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 646221 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Andrew M Ledbetter |
| NOMBRES | Andrew M |
| APELLIDO | Ledbetter |
| FIRMA | LEDBETTER A M |
| AFILIACIONES | Texas Christian University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8681-2242 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 43 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 282 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 43 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2007 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Examining Social Support Conversations on Reddit During Covid-19 Using Computational Methods
Public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic have posed unprecedented challenges to both physical and mental health. To better understand related social support conversations on online support groups, and how the topics of these conversations are associated with producing conversation and with authors' mental health status, we analyzed 65,004 posts and comments on the subreddit r/COVID19_support using structural topic modeling. Among the 22 va…
A semantic network and fantasy theme analysis of symbolic convergence and fan engagement with Taylor Swift’s songs
Taylor Swift has become one of the most profitable and influential musical artists of all time, and her cohesive, intertextual lyrics appear to be one reason for her success. Building from symbolic convergence theory, this study combined semantic network analysis and fantasy theme analysis to (a) identify fantasy types within Swift’s songs, (b) consider how these themes develop across her work, and (c) test whether the centrality of a song in the…
Sexual Minorities’ Uncertainty About Their Romantic Partner’s Communication With Their Family
Using the theory of motivated information management (TMIM), this study tested the degree to which sexual minorities’ uncertainty discrepancy about their partner’s communication about their relationship to their family of origin predicted their information management strategies and relational quality (i.e., closeness and satisfaction). Participants included 111 sexual minorities involved in a monogamous romantic relationship. Results supported th…
Applying Relational Turbulence Theory to Parent-Child Political Conversations
Christian nationalism, or the belief that America should be governed as a Christian country, is an influential yet fractious political philosophy. This investigation applied relational turbulence theory to understand how (dis)agreement about Christian nationalism may shape parent-child political conversations. A sample of 452 participants completed measures assessing (a) relational turbulence theory variables and (b) their and (c) their parents' …
Emerging adults’ financial conversations with parents as mediators of family communication patterns and financial Independence
This study examined emerging adults’ financial conversations with parents as mediators of family communication patterns (FCPs) (i.e., family conversation and conformity orientations) and emerging adults’ financial independence (i.e., financial autonomy and self-efficacy). Participants included 202 emerging adults ages 18 to 25. Whereas conversation orientation positively predicted both financial self-efficacy and autonomy, conformity orientation …
Tie strength and media use in friendships across the course of a year
Although central to media multiplexity theory’s logic, the proposition that tie strength and media multiplexity mutually cause each other has received limited empirical test. This study evaluated this proposition via survey data collected from friends in Spring 2020 and Spring 2021, examining their friendship across the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. When examining retrospective reports of the relationship pre-pandemic, results supported th…
Theme and sentiment of posts in a weight loss subreddit predict popularity, engagement, and users' weight loss
Despite the common use of social media to discuss health issues, little is known about how features of user-generated content influence users' health outcomes. To address this gap, we longitudinally studied large-scale conversations on the subreddit r/loseit, an online weight loss community, by computationally analyzing the themes and sentiment of users' posts and examining their associations with users' self-reported weight loss. Our study ident…
Relational Maintenance and Relational Entropy Predict Each Other Over a Year
To evaluate the foundational propositions of a nascent theory of relational entropy, this manuscript reports a longitudinal investigation of friendship across the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants included 165 members of Greek-letter organizations (both current students and alumni), with data collected in Spring 2020 and again in Spring 2021. Results indicated that relationships exhibited greater entropy and less maintenance in Sp…
Revisiting the impression management model
This manuscript reports the results of an empirical study that used the impression management model (IMM) to examine likelihood of channel use (among face-to-face, phone, and texting) in parent–child relationships. Drawing from face-negotiation theory, we recast the model in terms of face concern. Results of a survey of 715 participants indicated that mutual-face concern served as a particularly potent predictor of channel preferences. Channel ne…
Extending the personal branding affordances typology to parasocial interaction with public figures on social media
An introduction to the special issue on social media, or why this isn’t a special issue on social network(ing) sites
What is social media? When I posted the call for this special issue, several colleagues alerted me that I had assumed an answer to this question, and it was an answer they did not share. The initia
Participatory branding on social media
Creative workers in the social media industries face the imperative to brand themselves to audiences, corporate sponsors, and potential customers. This study complicates the role of self-branding on social media through the case of real-time creative labor on a social live streaming platform. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with live creators and viewers, this study suggests that the affordances of social live streaming …
When a romantic partner has a spinal cord injury
Using a sample of 312 people in a romantic relationship with a partner who has a spinal cord injury (SCI), this study examined the separate and combined effects of caregiving tasks, resilience, and received support on the participant's level of psychosocial distress. We also tested whether such distress might mediate the effect of the predictors on romantic relationship closeness. Results supported the beneficial effects of both resilience and re…
Parent-Child Privacy Boundary Conflict Patterns During the First Year of College
Drawing from communication privacy management theory and family communication patterns theory, this study investigated the extent to which parental privacy invasions and children's privacy defenses mediated the association between the family communication environment and psychosocial distress. This paper argues that invasions and defenses together form a conceptual space that forms four boundary conflict patterns: (a) combative (frequent invasion…
Investigating the Interplay Between Identity Gaps and Communication Patterns in Predicting Relational Intentions in Families in the United States
We tested the degree to which identity gaps mediate the association between family communication patterns and relational intentions. Participants included 498 emerging adults from the United States. Both personal-enacted and relational-communal identity gaps mediated the relationship between conversation and conformity orientation and relational intentions. Moreover, family identification (the extent to which one feels a sense of connection with …
Parental Divorce Disclosures, Young Adults’ Emotion Regulation Strategies, and Feeling Caught
Little research has focused on young adult children’s emotion management during parental divorce disclosures. However, understanding the ways in which divorce disclosures impact young adults is paramount in promoting healthy family communication. A greater comprehension of these impacts can help families process through difficult conversations and understand disclosures’ influence on individuals’ mental and emotional health. Guided by the divorce…
Narrating the Past, Enhancing the Present
Using the theories of communicated narrative sense-making and family communication patterns as a basis, this study examined (a) the characteristics of family genealogists, (b) dimensions of genealogical communication, and (c) the extent to which such communication predicts both immediate and extended family satisfaction. Data were collected from 423 participants (recruited in classrooms and online) who completed an online survey. Results revealed…
Extending media multiplexity theory to the extended family
Guided by media multiplexity theory (MMT), this article reports results of an experimental study examining how participants say they would respond to hypothetical changes in media use (i.e. increasing or decreasing use frequency) by an extended family member. After contending that MMT addresses both media use patterns and expectations, we employed expectancy violations theory (EVT) to consider the extent to which communication satisfaction (CS) a…
A Theoretical Comparison of Relational Maintenance and Closeness as Mediators of Family Communication Patterns in Parent-Child Relationships
This investigation sought to elaborate Koerner and Fitzpatrick’s theory of family communication by testing two theoretical models of family communication patterns (FCP), child-to-parent inclusion of the other in the self (IOS), and relational maintenance. Participants included 374 young adults recruited from two universities in different regions of the United States. Results best supported a model positioning maintenance as a mediator of the asso…
The influence of parent conflict style on children
Families constantly manage tension between autonomy from and connection to family members (T. C. Sabourin, 2003). Family conflict is an important maintenance behavior where this tension often plays out. Specifically, we hypothesized that the negotiation of family conflict between parents and children will be an important factor in the willingness of a young adult child to identify with family. Using a sample of young adults from 2 U.S. locations,…
Comparing equity and self‐expansion theory approaches to relational maintenance
Focusing on relational maintenance in heterosexual romantic dyads, this investigation compares the equity theory approach with self‐expansion theory, an alternative approach predicting maintenance behavior when a partner includes the other in the sense of the self. Results supported both theoretical explanations, albeit support for self‐expansion theory was more consistent, predicting all maintenance behavior types. Although relational maintenanc…
Raised to Dissent
This article extends Kassing's (1997, 1998) model of organizational dissent by evaluating the extent to which family-of-origin communication predicts upward (i.e., to superior) and lateral (i.e., to peer) dissent. Specifically, building from Koerner and Fitzpatrick's theory of family communication schemas, we predicted that family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity orientations) would serve as an individual factor that mean…
Do online communication attitudes mitigate the association between Facebook use and relational interdependence? An extension of media multiplexity theory
Given Facebook’s popularity for the maintenance of interpersonal relationships, this investigation examined the extent to which frequency of Facebook communication with a specific friend predicts relational interdependence. The chief goal of the investigation was to extend media multiplexity theory by examining whether attitudes toward (a) online self-disclosure and (b) online social connection moderated this association. Results not only replica…
Parental confirmation as a mitigator of feeling caught and family satisfaction
This study tested parental confirmation as a mitigator of the inverse association between young adults' feelings of being caught and family satisfaction. Participants included 567 young adult children from intact and divorced families. Results indicated that mother's confirmation mitigated the inverse association between feeling caught and family satisfaction for young adults from divorced families. Family satisfaction was lowest in divorced fami…
Parental Invasive Behaviors and Emerging Adults' Privacy Defenses
Building from previous efforts by Petronio (1994) Petronio, S. 1994. "Privacy binds in family interactions: The case of parental privacy invasion". In The dark side of interpersonal communication, Edited by: Cupach, W. R. and Spitzberg, B. H. 241–257. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and Ledbetter, Heiss, Sibal, Lev, Battle-Fisher, and Shubert (2010 Ledbetter, A. M., Heiss, S., Sibal, K., Lev, E., Battle-F…
Communication Processes That Mediate Family Communication Patterns and Mental Well-Being
In this study, demand/withdraw patterns and feeling caught were tested as mediators of family communication patterns and young adults' mental well-being. Participants included 567 young adults from divorced and nondivorced families. For young adults in nondivorced families, family conversation orientations had both a positive, direct effect on mental well-being and an indirect effect on well-being through witnessing marital demand/withdraw patter…
Parental Confirmation and Affection as Mediators of Family Communication Patterns and Children's Mental Well-Being
This study examined the extent to which parental confirmation and affection mediate the associations among family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity) and young adult children's mental well-being (i.e., self-esteem, perceived stress, and mental health). Participants included 567 young adult children from both first-marriage and postdivorce families. Results supported most of the hypothesized relationships among family conver…
Family Communication Patterns and Relational Maintenance Behavior
Journal Article Family Communication Patterns and Relational Maintenance Behavior: Direct and Mediated Associations with Friendship Closeness Get access Andrew M. Ledbetter Andrew M. Ledbetter 1School of Communication Studies, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701 1Corresponding author: Andrew M. Ledbetter; Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 35, Issue 1, 1 January 2009, Pages …
Family communication patterns as mediators of communication competence in the parent-child relationship
In this study we examined family conversation and conformity orientations as mediators of the association between young adults' perceptions of their parents' communication competence and their own self-reported communication competence. Participants included 417 young adult children from the United States. Although measurement invariance was established for both sons and daughters, separate models were tested to account for significant difference…
Relational quality and media use in interpersonal relationships
This study examines the relationship between relational quality and media use in relationships. In addition, the impacts of other potentially important variables such as the sex and relationship type of the participants and their partners are explored. College student participants focused on interaction experiences with an acquaintance, friend, romantic partner or family member. The results indicated that participant sex and partner sex did not a…
Measuring Online Communication Attitude
This paper reports a series of studies that develop an empirically-derived instrument for assessing online communication attitude, a multidimensional set of individual cognitive-affective constructs that influence media choice. The first study inductively develops an initial item pool and tests dimensional structure via exploratory factor analysis. The second study further refines this structure and also tests the association between online commu…
Content- and medium-specific decomposition of friendship relational maintenance
This manuscript reports an empirical study integrating equity and media multiplexity approaches to relational maintenance via separation of medium- and content-specific components of behaviors. Results from confirmatory factor analysis demonstrate good fit for the decomposition model. The analysis also revealed that content- and medium-specific components differentially predict the strength and quality of friends' influence. Specifically, positiv…
A Theoretical Comparison of Relational Maintenance and Closeness as Mediators of Family Communication Patterns in Parent-Child Relationships
This investigation sought to elaborate Koerner and Fitzpatrick’s theory of family communication by testing two theoretical models of family communication patterns (FCP), child-to-parent inclusion of the other in the self (IOS), and relational maintenance. Participants included 374 young adults recruited from two universities in different regions of the United States. Results best supported a model positioning maintenance as a mediator of the asso…
Patterns of media use and multiplexity
This study examines patterns of interpersonal media use in same-sex friendships. Using a refined version of Scott and Timmerman’s media use scale, participants reported the extent to which they used eight different communication media and the level of interdependence in the friendship. The results revealed four distinct factors of media use: asynchronous public communication, asynchronous private communication, social networking communication and…
Modeling everyday talk
This manuscript advances a mesolevel approach to everyday talk. Given frequent use of mediated communication within interpersonal relationships, we use a technique akin to multitrait/multimethod decomposition to separate content- and medium-specific variance sources. The results find that cross-sex friends enact everyday talk behaviors less frequently than do same-sex friends when communicating face-to-face and via telephone, but these difference…
Participatory branding on social media
Creative workers in the social media industries face the imperative to brand themselves to audiences, corporate sponsors, and potential customers. This study complicates the role of self-branding on social media through the case of real-time creative labor on a social live streaming platform. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with live creators and viewers, this study suggests that the affordances of social live streaming …
Relational uncertainty and communication efficacy as predictors of religious conversations in romantic relationships
This study investigated the associations among relational uncertainty, communication efficacy, and the frequency and comfort of discussing religious topics in romantic relationships. Participants included 204 young adults currently involved in a romantic relationship. Results indicated that relational uncertainty was inversely associated with the frequency and comfort with which dating partners discuss religious (and/or spiritual) topics. Communi…
Family Communication Patterns and Communication Competence as Predictors of Online Communication Attitude
This manuscript reports an empirical study investigating the extent to which family communication patterns predict attitudes toward online communication within interpersonal relationships. Grounded in both Koerner and Fitzpatrick's (2002a) Koerner, A. F. and Fitzpatrick, M. A. 2002a. Toward a theory of family communication. Communication Theory, 12: 70–91. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] generalized family communication theory a…
Media use and relational closeness in long-term friendships
Although most friendships use a variety of media to stay in touch, many studies have ignored the multimodality of social life. This study uses media niche theory to consider: changes in patterns of media use across time, which modalities tend to be used in association with other modalities; and the association between specific modalities and relational closeness. Data assessing modality usage and degree of friendship closeness were collected on b…
Do online communication attitudes mitigate the association between Facebook use and relational interdependence? An extension of media multiplexity theory
Given Facebook’s popularity for the maintenance of interpersonal relationships, this investigation examined the extent to which frequency of Facebook communication with a specific friend predicts relational interdependence. The chief goal of the investigation was to extend media multiplexity theory by examining whether attitudes toward (a) online self-disclosure and (b) online social connection moderated this association. Results not only replica…
Parent-Child Privacy Boundary Conflict Patterns During the First Year of College
Drawing from communication privacy management theory and family communication patterns theory, this study investigated the extent to which parental privacy invasions and children's privacy defenses mediated the association between the family communication environment and psychosocial distress. This paper argues that invasions and defenses together form a conceptual space that forms four boundary conflict patterns: (a) combative (frequent invasion…
Chronemic Cues and Sex Differences in Relational E-Mail
Although major computer-mediated communication theories incorporate assumptions about the potency of chronemic cues, the claim that chronemic cues shape online message interpretation has received little empirical attention. This article reports the results of two studies designed to assess the influence of reply rate in benign and complex relational e-mail. Study 1 demonstrates that reply rate functions as an immediacy cue, with some evidence for…
Extending media multiplexity theory to the extended family
Guided by media multiplexity theory (MMT), this article reports results of an experimental study examining how participants say they would respond to hypothetical changes in media use (i.e. increasing or decreasing use frequency) by an extended family member. After contending that MMT addresses both media use patterns and expectations, we employed expectancy violations theory (EVT) to consider the extent to which communication satisfaction (CS) a…
Parental Invasive Behaviors and Emerging Adults' Privacy Defenses
Building from previous efforts by Petronio (1994) Petronio, S. 1994. "Privacy binds in family interactions: The case of parental privacy invasion". In The dark side of interpersonal communication, Edited by: Cupach, W. R. and Spitzberg, B. H. 241–257. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and Ledbetter, Heiss, Sibal, Lev, Battle-Fisher, and Shubert (2010 Ledbetter, A. M., Heiss, S., Sibal, K., Lev, E., Battle-F…
Tie strength and media use in friendships across the course of a year
Although central to media multiplexity theory’s logic, the proposition that tie strength and media multiplexity mutually cause each other has received limited empirical test. This study evaluated this proposition via survey data collected from friends in Spring 2020 and Spring 2021, examining their friendship across the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. When examining retrospective reports of the relationship pre-pandemic, results supported th…
When a romantic partner has a spinal cord injury
Using a sample of 312 people in a romantic relationship with a partner who has a spinal cord injury (SCI), this study examined the separate and combined effects of caregiving tasks, resilience, and received support on the participant's level of psychosocial distress. We also tested whether such distress might mediate the effect of the predictors on romantic relationship closeness. Results supported the beneficial effects of both resilience and re…
Parental Divorce Disclosures, Young Adults’ Emotion Regulation Strategies, and Feeling Caught
Little research has focused on young adult children’s emotion management during parental divorce disclosures. However, understanding the ways in which divorce disclosures impact young adults is paramount in promoting healthy family communication. A greater comprehension of these impacts can help families process through difficult conversations and understand disclosures’ influence on individuals’ mental and emotional health. Guided by the divorce…
Narrating the Past, Enhancing the Present
Using the theories of communicated narrative sense-making and family communication patterns as a basis, this study examined (a) the characteristics of family genealogists, (b) dimensions of genealogical communication, and (c) the extent to which such communication predicts both immediate and extended family satisfaction. Data were collected from 423 participants (recruited in classrooms and online) who completed an online survey. Results revealed…
Theme and sentiment of posts in a weight loss subreddit predict popularity, engagement, and users' weight loss
Despite the common use of social media to discuss health issues, little is known about how features of user-generated content influence users' health outcomes. To address this gap, we longitudinally studied large-scale conversations on the subreddit r/loseit, an online weight loss community, by computationally analyzing the themes and sentiment of users' posts and examining their associations with users' self-reported weight loss. Our study ident…
An introduction to the special issue on social media, or why this isn’t a special issue on social network(ing) sites
What is social media? When I posted the call for this special issue, several colleagues alerted me that I had assumed an answer to this question, and it was an answer they did not share. The initia
The dark side of relationship pursuit
In 1994, Cupach and Spitzberg called interpersonal communication researchers to account for the dark side of relational life, which they conceptualize as “the slimy, seamy underbelly of human interaction, such that it may be” (1994, pp. 315–316). This line of inquiry advanced with an additional volume examining the dark side of close relationships (Spitzberg & Cupach, 1998). Cupach and Spitzberg’s (2004) recent book on stalking behavior continues…
Forecasting “friends forever”
Using data collected across 19 years, the chief goal of this study was to discover predictors of continued relational closeness between best friends. Participants were same‐sex and cross‐sex best friend pairs recruited from a small Midwestern college. In 1983, participants completed several tests and activities designed to assess facets of intimacy, with follow‐up studies in 1987 and 2002 measuring relational closeness. Regression analysis indica…
Parental Confirmation and Affection as Mediators of Family Communication Patterns and Children's Mental Well-Being
This study examined the extent to which parental confirmation and affection mediate the associations among family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity) and young adult children's mental well-being (i.e., self-esteem, perceived stress, and mental health). Participants included 567 young adult children from both first-marriage and postdivorce families. Results supported most of the hypothesized relationships among family conver…
Relational quality and media use in interpersonal relationships
This study examines the relationship between relational quality and media use in relationships. In addition, the impacts of other potentially important variables such as the sex and relationship type of the participants and their partners are explored. College student participants focused on interaction experiences with an acquaintance, friend, romantic partner or family member. The results indicated that participant sex and partner sex did not a…
Chronemic Cues and Sex Differences in Relational E-Mail
Although major computer-mediated communication theories incorporate assumptions about the potency of chronemic cues, the claim that chronemic cues shape online message interpretation has received little empirical attention. This article reports the results of two studies designed to assess the influence of reply rate in benign and complex relational e-mail. Study 1 demonstrates that reply rate functions as an immediacy cue, with some evidence for…
Communication Processes That Mediate Family Communication Patterns and Mental Well-Being
In this study, demand/withdraw patterns and feeling caught were tested as mediators of family communication patterns and young adults' mental well-being. Participants included 567 young adults from divorced and nondivorced families. For young adults in nondivorced families, family conversation orientations had both a positive, direct effect on mental well-being and an indirect effect on well-being through witnessing marital demand/withdraw patter…
Nonverbal Cues in E-Mail Supportive Communication
In face-to-face contexts, the use of emotional nonverbal cues tends to increase support satisfaction. However, it is not known whether emotional nonverbal cues function in the same manner in supportive interactions conducted across e-mail. This article reports the findings of two empirical studies examining the association between nonverbal cues, support satisfaction, and communicator sex. Results indicate that female senders use more emotional n…
Media use and relational closeness in long-term friendships
Although most friendships use a variety of media to stay in touch, many studies have ignored the multimodality of social life. This study uses media niche theory to consider: changes in patterns of media use across time, which modalities tend to be used in association with other modalities; and the association between specific modalities and relational closeness. Data assessing modality usage and degree of friendship closeness were collected on b…
Tunes That Bind
Despite the popularity of social network sites based on common interests, the association between these shared interests and relational development is not well understood. This manuscript reports results of an empirical investigation of interpersonal relationships on Last.fm, a music-based social network site with a multinational user base. In addition to baseline descriptors of relational behavior, the chief goals of this study were to examine t…
Patterns of media use and multiplexity
This study examines patterns of interpersonal media use in same-sex friendships. Using a refined version of Scott and Timmerman’s media use scale, participants reported the extent to which they used eight different communication media and the level of interdependence in the friendship. The results revealed four distinct factors of media use: asynchronous public communication, asynchronous private communication, social networking communication and…
Measuring Online Communication Attitude
This paper reports a series of studies that develop an empirically-derived instrument for assessing online communication attitude, a multidimensional set of individual cognitive-affective constructs that influence media choice. The first study inductively develops an initial item pool and tests dimensional structure via exploratory factor analysis. The second study further refines this structure and also tests the association between online commu…
Family communication patterns as mediators of communication competence in the parent-child relationship
In this study we examined family conversation and conformity orientations as mediators of the association between young adults' perceptions of their parents' communication competence and their own self-reported communication competence. Participants included 417 young adult children from the United States. Although measurement invariance was established for both sons and daughters, separate models were tested to account for significant difference…
Family Communication Patterns and Relational Maintenance Behavior
Journal Article Family Communication Patterns and Relational Maintenance Behavior: Direct and Mediated Associations with Friendship Closeness Get access Andrew M. Ledbetter Andrew M. Ledbetter 1School of Communication Studies, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701 1Corresponding author: Andrew M. Ledbetter; Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 35, Issue 1, 1 January 2009, Pages …
Attitudes Toward Online Social Connection and Self-Disclosure as Predictors of Facebook Communication and Relational Closeness
This investigation tested a theoretical model of communication behavior with specific Facebook friends, such that attitudes toward (a) online self-disclosure, and (b) online social connection, predict Facebook communication frequency and, in turn, relational closeness. Participants included both undergraduates and older adults. Results generally supported the model, with the interaction effect between self-disclosure and social connection directl…
Family Communication Patterns and Communication Competence as Predictors of Online Communication Attitude
This manuscript reports an empirical study investigating the extent to which family communication patterns predict attitudes toward online communication within interpersonal relationships. Grounded in both Koerner and Fitzpatrick's (2002a) Koerner, A. F. and Fitzpatrick, M. A. 2002a. Toward a theory of family communication. Communication Theory, 12: 70–91. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] generalized family communication theory a…
Content- and medium-specific decomposition of friendship relational maintenance
This manuscript reports an empirical study integrating equity and media multiplexity approaches to relational maintenance via separation of medium- and content-specific components of behaviors. Results from confirmatory factor analysis demonstrate good fit for the decomposition model. The analysis also revealed that content- and medium-specific components differentially predict the strength and quality of friends' influence. Specifically, positiv…
Modeling everyday talk
This manuscript advances a mesolevel approach to everyday talk. Given frequent use of mediated communication within interpersonal relationships, we use a technique akin to multitrait/multimethod decomposition to separate content- and medium-specific variance sources. The results find that cross-sex friends enact everyday talk behaviors less frequently than do same-sex friends when communicating face-to-face and via telephone, but these difference…
Parental confirmation as a mitigator of feeling caught and family satisfaction
This study tested parental confirmation as a mitigator of the inverse association between young adults' feelings of being caught and family satisfaction. Participants included 567 young adult children from intact and divorced families. Results indicated that mother's confirmation mitigated the inverse association between feeling caught and family satisfaction for young adults from divorced families. Family satisfaction was lowest in divorced fami…
Parental Invasive Behaviors and Emerging Adults' Privacy Defenses
Building from previous efforts by Petronio (1994) Petronio, S. 1994. "Privacy binds in family interactions: The case of parental privacy invasion". In The dark side of interpersonal communication, Edited by: Cupach, W. R. and Spitzberg, B. H. 241–257. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and Ledbetter, Heiss, Sibal, Lev, Battle-Fisher, and Shubert (2010 Ledbetter, A. M., Heiss, S., Sibal, K., Lev, E., Battle-F…
Relational uncertainty and communication efficacy as predictors of religious conversations in romantic relationships
This study investigated the associations among relational uncertainty, communication efficacy, and the frequency and comfort of discussing religious topics in romantic relationships. Participants included 204 young adults currently involved in a romantic relationship. Results indicated that relational uncertainty was inversely associated with the frequency and comfort with which dating partners discuss religious (and/or spiritual) topics. Communi…
The influence of parent conflict style on children
Families constantly manage tension between autonomy from and connection to family members (T. C. Sabourin, 2003). Family conflict is an important maintenance behavior where this tension often plays out. Specifically, we hypothesized that the negotiation of family conflict between parents and children will be an important factor in the willingness of a young adult child to identify with family. Using a sample of young adults from 2 U.S. locations,…
Comparing equity and self‐expansion theory approaches to relational maintenance
Focusing on relational maintenance in heterosexual romantic dyads, this investigation compares the equity theory approach with self‐expansion theory, an alternative approach predicting maintenance behavior when a partner includes the other in the sense of the self. Results supported both theoretical explanations, albeit support for self‐expansion theory was more consistent, predicting all maintenance behavior types. Although relational maintenanc…
Raised to Dissent
This article extends Kassing's (1997, 1998) model of organizational dissent by evaluating the extent to which family-of-origin communication predicts upward (i.e., to superior) and lateral (i.e., to peer) dissent. Specifically, building from Koerner and Fitzpatrick's theory of family communication schemas, we predicted that family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity orientations) would serve as an individual factor that mean…
Do online communication attitudes mitigate the association between Facebook use and relational interdependence? An extension of media multiplexity theory
Given Facebook’s popularity for the maintenance of interpersonal relationships, this investigation examined the extent to which frequency of Facebook communication with a specific friend predicts relational interdependence. The chief goal of the investigation was to extend media multiplexity theory by examining whether attitudes toward (a) online self-disclosure and (b) online social connection moderated this association. Results not only replica…
A Theoretical Comparison of Relational Maintenance and Closeness as Mediators of Family Communication Patterns in Parent-Child Relationships
This investigation sought to elaborate Koerner and Fitzpatrick’s theory of family communication by testing two theoretical models of family communication patterns (FCP), child-to-parent inclusion of the other in the self (IOS), and relational maintenance. Participants included 374 young adults recruited from two universities in different regions of the United States. Results best supported a model positioning maintenance as a mediator of the asso…
Psychology (43 obras) · Social Psychology (37 obras) · Social Psychology (25 obras) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (24 obras) · Developmental psychology (19 obras) · Computer Science (15 obras) · Impact of Technology on Adolescents (12 obras) · Interpersonal communication (12 obras) · Sociology (12 obras) · Communication (10 obras)