FlashReport Implicit partner affect, relationship satisfaction, and the prediction of romantic breakup Etienne P. LeBel * , Lorne Campbell Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, Social Science Centre, London, Ont., Canada N6A 5C2 article info Article history: Received 12 November 2008 Revised 29 June 2009 Available online 19 July 2009 Keywords: Implicit partner evaluation Implicit measures Name-letter effect Relationship satisfaction Relationship stability abstract The current research investigated the role of spontaneous partner feelings (implicit partner affect) in the dynamics of relationship satisfaction, commitment, and romantic dissolution. Participants completed a variant of the name-letter task as a measure of implicit partner affect, and self-report measures of rela- tionship satisfaction and commitment. Approximately 4 months later, participants were contacted to assess their current relationship status. Overall, participants showed a biased preference for their part- ner’s initials (after adjusting for proper baselines), indicating the presence of positive implicit partner affect. Participants with more positive implicit partner affect were more satisfied with, but not more committed to, their relationship. Additionally, implicit partner affect exerted a significant indirect effect on relationship stability. These effects were independent of relationship length, age, and gender. Impli- cations for the role of automatic affective processes in relationship processes and the utility of indirect measures for shedding light on relationship dynamics are discussed. Ó 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ”What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1–2) In the line above, Juliet expresses to Romeo that a name is arti- ficial and meaningless—it is the person attached to that name that is of prime importance. But the letters Juliet considers meaningless can over time become inseparable from the bearer of the name, and even a simple glance at a partner’s initials can automatically elicit one’s feelings toward his or her partner (DeHart, Pelham, & Murray, 2004). Such spontaneous feelings toward one’s partner are indeed ubiquitous (e.g., Banse, 1999; Scinta & Gable, 2007; Zayas & Shoda, 2005), but how these affective responses are asso- ciated with various relationship processes is still not well under- stood. In particular, how spontaneous partner feelings play into the dynamics of relationship satisfaction, commitment, and romantic dissolution over time has yet to be examined. In the re- search reported in this article, we examined the role of spontane- ous partner feelings—or implicit partner affect (IPA)—in predicting relationship satisfaction, commitment, and ultimately, prospective romantic breakup. The current investigation aims at obtaining deeper insights into the interplay of affective and cognitive processes underlying rela- tionship satisfaction, commitment, and dissolution by using a no- vel methodology to assess IPA: participants’ evaluations of their partner’s initials. This procedure is based on the name-letter task (NLT) originally proposed by Nuttin (1985), which has become a popular measure of implicit self-esteem (ISE) in the self-esteem lit- erature. A common finding in this research is that people tend to evaluate their own initials more favorably compared to baseline evaluations of those letters, which is commonly interpreted as an indicator of positive ISE (e.g., Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000). More importantly, individual differences in name-letter preferences have been shown to predict a large variety of self-es- teem-related outcomes (e.g., depression: Franck, De Raedt, & De Houwer, 2007; unrealistic optimism: Bosson, Brown, Zeigler-Hill, & Swann, 2003). We used an adaptation of the name-letter task in the present research to assess spontaneous feelings toward one’s partner, such that preference for one’s partner’s initials was inter- preted as an index of IPA (see also DeHart et al., 2004). IPA is conceptualized as the spontaneous feelings (i.e., positive or negative gut reaction) associated with one’s romantic partner or partner-related symbols (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). In this con- ceptualization, the term implicit reflects the fact that these affec- tive responses can be elicited unintentionally and independent of cognitive resources (Bargh, 1994). In addition, individuals may be unaware of the source of their affective response to a partner-re- lated object, even though the affective response itself may be con- scious (Gawronski, Hofmann, & Wilbur, 2006). This conceptualization is similar to DeHart et al.’s (2004) view of impli- cit evaluations of close others as the general favorability of implicit 0022-1031/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.07.003 * Corresponding author. Address: Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, Social Science Centre, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2. E-mail address: elebel@uwo.ca (E.P. LeBel). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45 (2009) 1291–1294 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Social Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp