Life Events, Relationship Quality, and Depression: An Investigation of Judgment Discontinuity in Vivo

Relationships among stressful life events, negative affect, and judged quality of intimate relationships were explored. Three studies and a mini-meta-analysis revealed that as negative life events increased, judgments of close relationships gradually became less favorable, jumped back toward positiv...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of personality and social psychology 1998-01, Vol.74 (1), p.36-52
Main Authors: Tesser, Abraham, Beach, Steven R. H
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Biological and medical sciences
Depression
Depression (Emotion)
Depression - psychology
Experiences (Events)
Family - psychology
Family relations
Female
Human
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Judgement
Judgment
Life Change Events
Male
Marital quality
Marital Satisfaction
Medical sciences
Mental depression
Mental stress
Meta-analysis
Mood disorders
Mother-Child Relations
Negative life events
Parent Child Relations
Parents
Personality
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Relationship
Relationship Quality
Social psychology
Spouses
Stress
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Summary:Relationships among stressful life events, negative affect, and judged quality of intimate relationships were explored. Three studies and a mini-meta-analysis revealed that as negative life events increased, judgments of close relationships gradually became less favorable, jumped back toward positivity, and then, again, gradually became less favorable. The same methods of analysis revealed a relationship between negative life events and negative affect with no evidence of significant discontinuities. Moreover, the correlation between relationship satisfaction and negative affect (with negative events held constant), was maximized at the point of relationship-judgment discontinuity. Although the findings are complex, they are consistent with the authors' theoretical account and represent an initial attempt to conceptualize the effect of negative life events in light of the recent social judgment literature.
ISSN:0022-3514
1939-1315
DOI:10.1037/0022-3514.74.1.36