W Steven Rholes
Biographic Data
| ID | 18882 |
|---|---|
| NAME | W Steven Rholes |
| GIVEN NAMES | W Steven |
| FAMILY NAME | Rholes |
| SIGNATURE | RHOLES W S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Texas A&M University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9273-2115 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1084 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Here one time, gone the next: Fluctuations in support received and provided predict changes in relationship satisfaction across the transition to parenthood
Extant research has demonstrated that higher mean (average) levels of social support often produce robust relational benefits. However, partners may not maintain the same level of support across time, resulting in potential fluctuations (i.e., within-person variations across time) in support. Despite the theorizing and initial research on fluctuations in relationship-relevant thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, little is known about (a) who is mos…
New parental positivity: The role of positive emotions in promoting relational adjustment during the transition to parenthood
The transition to parenthood can be a challenging time for new parent couples, as a baby comes with changes and stress that can negatively influence new parents' relational functioning in the form of reduced relationship satisfaction and disrupted partner social support. Yet, the transition to parenthood is also often experienced as a joyous time. In this research, we draw on the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions to suggest that new p…
Support Processes Predict Declines in Attachment Avoidance Across the Transition to Parenthood
Attachment orientations in adulthood can change over time, but the specific circumstances that directly affect change are not well understood. Bowlby proposed that those circumstances involve the assimilation of information that is incongruent with an individual’s existing attachment orientation and underlying working models. In this study, 137 couples transitioning to parenthood were followed across the first 2 years of their firstborn child’s l…
Self-Efficacy and Declines Over Time in Attachment Anxiety During the Transition to Parenthood
Attachment anxiety can decline in relationships but little is known about how or why. A new framework—the Attachment Security Enhancement Model (ASEM)—suggests that what allays current (momentary) insecurity may not necessarily reduce attachment anxiety across time. This article differentiates momentary versus extended attachment processes by examining concurrent versus longitudinal associations. Cohabitating partners ( N = 137 couples) were exam…
Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies
Significance What predicts how happy people are with their romantic relationships? Relationship science—an interdisciplinary field spanning psychology, sociology, economics, family studies, and communication—has identified hundreds of variables that purportedly shape romantic relationship quality. The current project used machine learning to directly quantify and compare the predictive power of many such variables among 11,196 romantic couples. P…
Remaining in unhappy relationships: The roles of attachment anxiety and fear of change
Romantic relationships are one of the most important sources of well-being. Unfortunately, many people who begin relationships with high hopes later find that they are unhappy but unwilling or unable to leave. Why do people remain in unsatisfactory relationships? The present research examined whether elevated fear of change in anxiously attached individuals is associated with greater commitment to unsatisfying relationships. We found that fear of…
Dyad to triad: A longitudinal analysis of humor and pregnancy intention during the transition to parenthood
The transition to parenthood is a stressful life event that often leads to decreases in relationship satisfaction over time. Guided by the Stress Buffering Model, we examined how pregnancy intention and humor use are associated with relationship satisfaction across the transition to parenthood using a multi-wave longitudinal design. First-time parents were initially assessed prenatally and then every 6-month postpartum for 2 years. Six months aft…
Partner predictors of marital aggression across the transition to parenthood: An I3 approach
The stress that arises during the transition to parenthood often places significant strain on marriages that can result in marital problems such as aggression victimization. In this research, we use an I3 framework to identify specific partner variables that are likely to promote physical aggression victimization across the transition to parenthood. Examining both intercepts (i.e., mean levels of aggression victimization estimated at childbirth) …
Adult attachment, stress, and romantic relationships
The ebbs and flows of attachment: Within-person variation in attachment undermine secure individuals’ relationship wellbeing across time
Although attachment security is relatively stable over time, individuals do experience significant within-person variation in their attachment security across time. No research to date, however, has assessed the relational consequences of within-person variation (fluctuations) in attachment security toward a specific attachment figure. Study 1 (N = 409) first examined whether attachment security was associated with individuals' expectations that …
Dads doing diapers: Individual and relational outcomes associated with the division of childcare across the transition to parenthood
This longitudinal study examined how relative contributions to the division of childcare are related to individual and relational outcomes across the first 2 years of the transition to parenthood. Data were collected from a large sample of first-time parents 6 weeks before the birth of their child and then at 6, 12, 18, and 24 months postpartum. The results revealed that certain individual differences-especially gender and attachment avoidance-sh…
A longitudinal study of conflict in new parents: The role of attachment
In this longitudinal study of the transition to parenthood, couples reported on their own conflict resolution tactics and their perceptions of their partners' tactics. Their reports were analyzed in terms of their own and their partners' attachment styles. The results showed that more anxious and more avoidant persons used less effective conflict resolution styles. They showed that both actor and partner attachment styles were related to conflict…
Adult Attachment Orientations, Stress, and Romantic Relationships
Self-regulatory depletion and attachment avoidance: Increasing the accessibility of negative attachment-related memories
Attachment orientations and depression: A longitudinal study of new parents
In this longitudinal study, we followed a large sample of first-time parents (both partners) across the first 2 years of the transition to parenthood. Guided by attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969), we tested several predictions about how attachment anxiety and avoidance are related to the incidence, maintenance, increase, and decline of depressive symptoms in both sexes across the first 2 years of the transition. We found that (a) the association be…
Attachment avoidance and the cultural fit hypothesis: A cross-cultural investigation
This study examined the impact of attachment avoidance on relationship outcomes. A “cultural fit” hypothesis, which states that individual differences in personality should be associated with relationship problems if they encourage patterns of behavior that are incongruent with cultural norms, was investigated. It was hypothesized that attachment avoidance, a style of relationship in which emotional distance and independence are emphasized, would…
Attachment and relationships: Milestones and future directions
Adult attachment researchers have made important strides during the past 25 years in testing and applying attachment theory to multiple personal and interpersonal domains. We highlight some of the major milestones and then propose several directions for future research. Some of the most important and promising directions include testing additional normative processes implied by attachment theory, developing and testing critical connections betwee…
Religious Fundamentalism and Terror Management: Differences by Interdependent and Independent Self-construal
Two studies tested the hypothesis that religious fundamentalism and self-construal are associated with systematic differences in death awareness. We hypothesized that, for individuals low in religious fundamentalism, who presumably experience less of an anxiety buffer based on worldview, interdependent self-construal (a sense of the self as encompassing connections to close others) should be associated with reduced baseline death awareness — beca…
Attachment, Perceived Support, and the Transition to Parenthood: Social Policy and Health Implications
For some people involved in certain relationships, the transition to parenthood is associated with precipitous declines in marital satisfaction and increases in depressive symptoms. After briefly reviewing the transition to parenthood literature, we explain why attachment theory is particularly well suited to account for how and why certain people involved in certain relationships are so vulnerable to these negative outcomes. Testing diathesis‐st…
Religious Fundamentalism and Terror Management
The study reported herein tested the following hypothesis: Religious fundamentalism can serve a protective function against existential anxiety, such that the need to engage in secular worldview defense when mortality is made salient is reduced for high fundamentalists. The results showed that high fundamentalists engaged in less worldview defense after thinking about their own death versus a control topic. Low fundamentalists, however, engaged i…
Working models of attachment and reactions to different forms of caregiving from romantic partners
Inspired by attachment theory, the authors tested a series of theoretically derived predictions about connections between attachment working models (attachment to one's parents assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview; M. Main & R. Goldwyn, 1994) and the effectiveness of specific types of caregiving spontaneously displayed by dating partners during a stressful conflict-resolution discussion. Each partner first completed the Adult Attachment Int…
Successfully challenging fundamentalist beliefs results in increased death awareness
Changes in attachment orientations across the transition to parenthood
Adult attachment, the transition to parenthood, and depressive symptoms
Testing a model suggested by J. Bowlby (1988), this study investigated how a personal vulnerability (attachment ambivalence) interacts with perceptions of deficient spousal support before and during a major life stressor (the transition to parenthood) to predict pre-to-postnatal increases in depressive symptoms. Highly ambivalent women who entered parenthood perceiving either less support or greater anger from their husbands experienced pre-to-po…
Working Models of Attachment, Support Giving, and Support Seeking in a Stressful Situation
This study examined how working models of attachment to parents (assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview—AAI) and romantic partners (assessed by the Adult Attachment Questionnaire—AAQ) predicted spontaneous caregiving and care seeking in a stressful situation. Dating couples were videotaped while one partner (the man) waited to do a stressful task. Observers then rated each woman’s support giving and each man’s support seeking. The AAI and the…
Category accessibility and impression formation
Support seeking and support giving within couples in an anxiety-provoking situation: The role of attachment styles
This study examined how adult attachment styles moderate spontaneous behavior between dating couples when 1 member of the dyad is confronted with an anxiety-provoking situation. Eighty-three dating couples were unobtrusively videotaped for 5 min in a waiting room while the woman waited to participate in an activity known to provoke anxiety in most people. Independent observers then evaluated each partner's behavior on several dimensions. Results …
Conflict in close relationships: An attachment perspective
Saying is believing”: Effects of message modification on memory and liking for the person described
Attachment and anger in an anxiety-provoking situation
In this study, women were told they would engage in an anxiety-provoking activity. Women then waited with their dating partner for the activity to begin. During this 5-min "stress" period, each couple's interaction was videotaped unobtrusively. Each couple was then told that the woman would not have to do the stressful activity, and each couple was unobtrusively videotaped again during a 5-min "recovery" period. The behavior of both partners was …
Attachment Orientations, Dependence, and Behavior in a Stressful Situation: An Application of the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model
In this study, we assessed how attachment orientations and degree of relationship dependence influence individuals' own behavior and their partners' behavior in a stressful situation using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM; Kashy & Kenny, 2000). Dating couples were videotaped while the female partner was waiting to engage in an anxiety-provoking task. Raters then evaluated the behavior of each partner on theoretically relevant dimensi…
Adult attachment, the transition to parenthood, and depressive symptoms
Testing a model suggested by J. Bowlby (1988), this study investigated how a personal vulnerability (attachment ambivalence) interacts with perceptions of deficient spousal support before and during a major life stressor (the transition to parenthood) to predict pre-to-postnatal increases in depressive symptoms. Highly ambivalent women who entered parenthood perceiving either less support or greater anger from their husbands experienced pre-to-po…
Adult attachment and the transition to parenthood
This study examined how a major life stressor--the transition to parenthood--affects marital satisfaction and functioning among persons with different attachment orientations. As hypothesized, the interaction between women's degree of attachment ambivalence and their perceptions of spousal support (assessed 6 weeks prior to childbirth) predicted systematic changes in men's and women's marital satisfaction and related factors over time (6 months p…
The ebbs and flows of attachment: Within-person variation in attachment undermine secure individuals’ relationship wellbeing across time
Although attachment security is relatively stable over time, individuals do experience significant within-person variation in their attachment security across time. No research to date, however, has assessed the relational consequences of within-person variation (fluctuations) in attachment security toward a specific attachment figure. Study 1 (N = 409) first examined whether attachment security was associated with individuals' expectations that …
Changes in attachment orientations across the transition to parenthood
Attachment and relationships: Milestones and future directions
Adult attachment researchers have made important strides during the past 25 years in testing and applying attachment theory to multiple personal and interpersonal domains. We highlight some of the major milestones and then propose several directions for future research. Some of the most important and promising directions include testing additional normative processes implied by attachment theory, developing and testing critical connections betwee…
Working models of attachment and reactions to different forms of caregiving from romantic partners
Inspired by attachment theory, the authors tested a series of theoretically derived predictions about connections between attachment working models (attachment to one's parents assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview; M. Main & R. Goldwyn, 1994) and the effectiveness of specific types of caregiving spontaneously displayed by dating partners during a stressful conflict-resolution discussion. Each partner first completed the Adult Attachment Int…
Dads doing diapers: Individual and relational outcomes associated with the division of childcare across the transition to parenthood
This longitudinal study examined how relative contributions to the division of childcare are related to individual and relational outcomes across the first 2 years of the transition to parenthood. Data were collected from a large sample of first-time parents 6 weeks before the birth of their child and then at 6, 12, 18, and 24 months postpartum. The results revealed that certain individual differences-especially gender and attachment avoidance-sh…
Successfully challenging fundamentalist beliefs results in increased death awareness
A developmental study of learned helplessness
Examined susceptibility to learned helplessness among 20 children from each of kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 3, and Grade 5 classes by exposing groups of Ss to either repeated failure or repeated success on hidden figures problems. Helplessness was measured by Ss' persistence in looking for hidden figures and their capacity to find them following repeated success or failure. It was hypothesized that younger Ss would be less susceptible to helpless…
Attachment orientations and depression: A longitudinal study of new parents
In this longitudinal study, we followed a large sample of first-time parents (both partners) across the first 2 years of the transition to parenthood. Guided by attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969), we tested several predictions about how attachment anxiety and avoidance are related to the incidence, maintenance, increase, and decline of depressive symptoms in both sexes across the first 2 years of the transition. We found that (a) the association be…
Impression formation and role fulfillment: A “holistic reference” approach
Religious Fundamentalism and Terror Management
The study reported herein tested the following hypothesis: Religious fundamentalism can serve a protective function against existential anxiety, such that the need to engage in secular worldview defense when mortality is made salient is reduced for high fundamentalists. The results showed that high fundamentalists engaged in less worldview defense after thinking about their own death versus a control topic. Low fundamentalists, however, engaged i…
Attachment orientations, marriage, and the transition to parenthood
Attachment, Perceived Support, and the Transition to Parenthood: Social Policy and Health Implications
For some people involved in certain relationships, the transition to parenthood is associated with precipitous declines in marital satisfaction and increases in depressive symptoms. After briefly reviewing the transition to parenthood literature, we explain why attachment theory is particularly well suited to account for how and why certain people involved in certain relationships are so vulnerable to these negative outcomes. Testing diathesis‐st…
Remaining in unhappy relationships: The roles of attachment anxiety and fear of change
Romantic relationships are one of the most important sources of well-being. Unfortunately, many people who begin relationships with high hopes later find that they are unhappy but unwilling or unable to leave. Why do people remain in unsatisfactory relationships? The present research examined whether elevated fear of change in anxiously attached individuals is associated with greater commitment to unsatisfying relationships. We found that fear of…
Emotional states and memory biases: Effects of cognitive priming and mood
Recent studies have shown that naturally occurring and experimentally induced affect states enhance the accessibility to retrieval of memories of life experiences that are congruent in valence with the affect state. Previous studies have suggested that this memory bias results from the influence of affective processes on memory retrieval. In our study we manipulated mood state by having subjects read statements expressing positive or negative sel…
Dyad to triad: A longitudinal analysis of humor and pregnancy intention during the transition to parenthood
The transition to parenthood is a stressful life event that often leads to decreases in relationship satisfaction over time. Guided by the Stress Buffering Model, we examined how pregnancy intention and humor use are associated with relationship satisfaction across the transition to parenthood using a multi-wave longitudinal design. First-time parents were initially assessed prenatally and then every 6-month postpartum for 2 years. Six months aft…
Order effects on children's moral and achievement judgments
JACQUELYNNE E. PARSONSSmith CollegeDIANE N. RUBLE, ELLEN CHERESKIN KLOSSON,NINA S. FELDMAN, AND WILLIAM S. RHOLESPrinceton UniversityThroughout the literature on the developmentof moral judgments and in a more recent exten-sion of this literature to achievement judgments(Weiner & Peter, 1973), it has been reported thatpreschoolers base their judgments more on out-come than on intent. However, outcome has gen-erally been the second, and thus the m…
Here one time, gone the next: Fluctuations in support received and provided predict changes in relationship satisfaction across the transition to parenthood
Extant research has demonstrated that higher mean (average) levels of social support often produce robust relational benefits. However, partners may not maintain the same level of support across time, resulting in potential fluctuations (i.e., within-person variations across time) in support. Despite the theorizing and initial research on fluctuations in relationship-relevant thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, little is known about (a) who is mos…
Order effects on children's moral and achievement judgments
JACQUELYNNE E. PARSONSSmith CollegeDIANE N. RUBLE, ELLEN CHERESKIN KLOSSON,NINA S. FELDMAN, AND WILLIAM S. RHOLESPrinceton UniversityThroughout the literature on the developmentof moral judgments and in a more recent exten-sion of this literature to achievement judgments(Weiner & Peter, 1973), it has been reported thatpreschoolers base their judgments more on out-come than on intent. However, outcome has gen-erally been the second, and thus the m…
Impression formation and role fulfillment: A “holistic reference” approach
Category accessibility and impression formation
Saying is believing”: Effects of message modification on memory and liking for the person described
A developmental study of learned helplessness
Examined susceptibility to learned helplessness among 20 children from each of kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 3, and Grade 5 classes by exposing groups of Ss to either repeated failure or repeated success on hidden figures problems. Helplessness was measured by Ss' persistence in looking for hidden figures and their capacity to find them following repeated success or failure. It was hypothesized that younger Ss would be less susceptible to helpless…
Experiences that motivate moral development: The role of cognitive dissonance
Attributions and expectations: A confluence of vulnerabilities in mild depression in a college student population
The reformulated model of learned helplessness assumes that attributional style has its impact on depression in part through the intermediary effect of pessimistic or negative expectations about the occurrence of future outcomes. A possible logical next step in testing the model is to measure jointly attributions and expectations and to examine their combined (interactive) contributions. We used a short-term longitudinal design to examine whether…
Emotional states and memory biases: Effects of cognitive priming and mood
Recent studies have shown that naturally occurring and experimentally induced affect states enhance the accessibility to retrieval of memories of life experiences that are congruent in valence with the affect state. Previous studies have suggested that this memory bias results from the influence of affective processes on memory retrieval. In our study we manipulated mood state by having subjects read statements expressing positive or negative sel…
Support seeking and support giving within couples in an anxiety-provoking situation: The role of attachment styles
This study examined how adult attachment styles moderate spontaneous behavior between dating couples when 1 member of the dyad is confronted with an anxiety-provoking situation. Eighty-three dating couples were unobtrusively videotaped for 5 min in a waiting room while the woman waited to participate in an activity known to provoke anxiety in most people. Independent observers then evaluated each partner's behavior on several dimensions. Results …
Adult attachment styles and mothers' relationships with their young children
This research examined the relationship between adult attachment styles and mothers' feelings of closeness to their children, mothers' interaction styles in a teaching situation, individual differences in the desire to have children, and the concerns individuals have about their ability to relate to young children as parents. Investigation 1 revealed that more avoidant mothers did not feel as close to their preschool children as did more secure m…
Conflict in close relationships: An attachment perspective
Attachment and anger in an anxiety-provoking situation
In this study, women were told they would engage in an anxiety-provoking activity. Women then waited with their dating partner for the activity to begin. During this 5-min "stress" period, each couple's interaction was videotaped unobtrusively. Each couple was then told that the woman would not have to do the stressful activity, and each couple was unobtrusively videotaped again during a 5-min "recovery" period. The behavior of both partners was …
Adult attachment and the transition to parenthood
This study examined how a major life stressor--the transition to parenthood--affects marital satisfaction and functioning among persons with different attachment orientations. As hypothesized, the interaction between women's degree of attachment ambivalence and their perceptions of spousal support (assessed 6 weeks prior to childbirth) predicted systematic changes in men's and women's marital satisfaction and related factors over time (6 months p…
Attachment Orientations, Dependence, and Behavior in a Stressful Situation: An Application of the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model
In this study, we assessed how attachment orientations and degree of relationship dependence influence individuals' own behavior and their partners' behavior in a stressful situation using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM; Kashy & Kenny, 2000). Dating couples were videotaped while the female partner was waiting to engage in an anxiety-provoking task. Raters then evaluated the behavior of each partner on theoretically relevant dimensi…
Working Models of Attachment, Support Giving, and Support Seeking in a Stressful Situation
This study examined how working models of attachment to parents (assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview—AAI) and romantic partners (assessed by the Adult Attachment Questionnaire—AAQ) predicted spontaneous caregiving and care seeking in a stressful situation. Dating couples were videotaped while one partner (the man) waited to do a stressful task. Observers then rated each woman’s support giving and each man’s support seeking. The AAI and the…
Attachment orientations, marriage, and the transition to parenthood
Changes in attachment orientations across the transition to parenthood
Adult attachment, the transition to parenthood, and depressive symptoms
Testing a model suggested by J. Bowlby (1988), this study investigated how a personal vulnerability (attachment ambivalence) interacts with perceptions of deficient spousal support before and during a major life stressor (the transition to parenthood) to predict pre-to-postnatal increases in depressive symptoms. Highly ambivalent women who entered parenthood perceiving either less support or greater anger from their husbands experienced pre-to-po…
Successfully challenging fundamentalist beliefs results in increased death awareness
Working models of attachment and reactions to different forms of caregiving from romantic partners
Inspired by attachment theory, the authors tested a series of theoretically derived predictions about connections between attachment working models (attachment to one's parents assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview; M. Main & R. Goldwyn, 1994) and the effectiveness of specific types of caregiving spontaneously displayed by dating partners during a stressful conflict-resolution discussion. Each partner first completed the Adult Attachment Int…
Religious Fundamentalism and Terror Management: Differences by Interdependent and Independent Self-construal
Two studies tested the hypothesis that religious fundamentalism and self-construal are associated with systematic differences in death awareness. We hypothesized that, for individuals low in religious fundamentalism, who presumably experience less of an anxiety buffer based on worldview, interdependent self-construal (a sense of the self as encompassing connections to close others) should be associated with reduced baseline death awareness — beca…
Attachment, Perceived Support, and the Transition to Parenthood: Social Policy and Health Implications
For some people involved in certain relationships, the transition to parenthood is associated with precipitous declines in marital satisfaction and increases in depressive symptoms. After briefly reviewing the transition to parenthood literature, we explain why attachment theory is particularly well suited to account for how and why certain people involved in certain relationships are so vulnerable to these negative outcomes. Testing diathesis‐st…
Religious Fundamentalism and Terror Management
The study reported herein tested the following hypothesis: Religious fundamentalism can serve a protective function against existential anxiety, such that the need to engage in secular worldview defense when mortality is made salient is reduced for high fundamentalists. The results showed that high fundamentalists engaged in less worldview defense after thinking about their own death versus a control topic. Low fundamentalists, however, engaged i…
Attachment avoidance and the cultural fit hypothesis: A cross-cultural investigation
This study examined the impact of attachment avoidance on relationship outcomes. A “cultural fit” hypothesis, which states that individual differences in personality should be associated with relationship problems if they encourage patterns of behavior that are incongruent with cultural norms, was investigated. It was hypothesized that attachment avoidance, a style of relationship in which emotional distance and independence are emphasized, would…
Attachment and relationships: Milestones and future directions
Adult attachment researchers have made important strides during the past 25 years in testing and applying attachment theory to multiple personal and interpersonal domains. We highlight some of the major milestones and then propose several directions for future research. Some of the most important and promising directions include testing additional normative processes implied by attachment theory, developing and testing critical connections betwee…
Psychology (40 works) · Social Psychology (36 works) · Developmental psychology (32 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (28 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (22 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Attachment theory (17 works) · Anxiety (12 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (11 works) · Clinical Psychology (11 works)