Social networking sites are becoming a prevalent form of communication in the escalation of romantic relationships. An online survey (n=403) addressed emerging adults' experiences with Facebook and romantic relationships, particularly a unique affordance of Facebook: the ability to declare oneself as "In a Relationship" and actively link one's profile to a romantic partner's, commonly known as ...

Recently a compassionate love scale was developed to assess compassionate love or altruistic love for different targets (e.g., romantic partner, close others and all the humanity; Sprecher & Fehr, 2005). This study was conducted to examine the psychometric properties of the Compassionate Love Scale in the Portuguese context. In addition, it has been examined how compassionate love for a romanti...

This study tests a model of young adult romantic quality as a moderator of the effects of early caregiving on anxious-depressed symptoms over a 9-year period in adulthood. Participants (n = 93) were a subsample from a longitudinal study of risk and adaptation. Quality of early caregiving was measured using observational data collected at five points in the first 4 years of life. Young adult rom...

Our relationships with romantic partners are often some of the closest and most important relationships that we experience in our adult lives. Interpersonal closeness in romantic relationships is characterised by an increased overlap between cognitive representations of oneself and one's partner. Importantly, this type of self-other overlap also occurs in the bodily domain, whereby we can repre...

BACKGROUND Aggression in romantic relationships is a continuing factor for breakups, physical assault, kidnapping, rape and even murder. It is also associated with adjustment difficulties including peer rejection, depression and maladaptive personality features. The present study aims to explore the personality correlates of aggression in romantic relationship. MATERIALS AND METHODS The sampl...

What factors determine whether or not a young adult will fall in love? Sociological surveys and psychological studies have shown that non-genetic factors, such as socioeconomic status, external appearance, and personality attributes, are crucial components in romantic relationship formation. Here we demonstrate that genetic variants also contribute to romantic relationship formation. As love-re...

It is well established in nonromantic contexts that people tend to like individuals who like them (Kenny, 1994); in fact, such reciprocity of liking emerges even when individuals first meet for only a few minutes (Chapdelaine, Kenny, & LaFontana, 1994). Textbooks and common psychological lore frequently extend these findings to romantic liking, but the validity of this extension is unclear. Whe...

Youth sexuality has been primarily studied with a focus on its potential public health issues, such as sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies, and its comorbidity with other risky behaviors. More recently, it has been studied as a normative step in romantic partnerships, either pre- or post-marital, as well as outside the context of romantic involvement. In this paper, we revi...

Asian American men and women have been largely neglected in previous studies of romantic relationship formation and status. Using data from the first and fourth waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we examine romantic and sexual involvement among young adults, most of who were between the ages of 25 to 32 (N=11,555). Drawing from explanations that...

The present study examined whether predictors of romantic-partner conflict may vary as a function of family structure. Using a cross-sectional design, we tested a mediation model of conflict resolution behaviours among late adolescents from intact (n=185) and divorced (n=87) families. Adolescents rated conflict resolution behaviours in five dyadic relationships: interparental, mother-adolescent...