SIR Lab Dyadic Interaction Study, 2010-2012

72 couples from the San Francisco Bay Area (20% community participants and 80% UC Berkeley students) participated in a laboratory study with (a) baseline survey measures, (2) lab interactions, and (3) a 9-month longitudinal follow-up survey (74 participants from 53 couples completed the follow up questionnaires). To be eligible, they must have been at least 18 years old, fluent in English, and in their relationship for at least 2 months. On average, participants were 22 years old (range 18-56), had been involved in their romantic relationship for an average length of 21 months (range 1-87), 43% were Asian/Asian American or Pacific Islander, 36% were European or European American, and 9% were Hispanic (13% other race/ethnicities). 71 out of the 72 couples were heterosexual. Participants independently completed an online questionnaire in the days prior to their lab session. The couple attended the lab session together. There, the participants participated in a series of structured videorecorded conversations, and privately answered brief questionnaires at the beginning of the lab session and again after each conversation. Topics were: -A teamwork task: For this task, couples were given 4 min to work together ranking items needed for survival if they were stranded in the Far North (Winter Survival Exercise; Johnson Johnson, 2003). - A problem solving discussion: For this conversation, both partners listed the top three sources of conflict in their relationship at the beginning of the session and later one partner was randomly assigned to pick the topic for the conversation from one of the three that they had listed. The partner who selected the topic was put in charge of the conversation and couples were given 5 min to work toward a resolution of the conflict. After each conversation, participants completed a series of questions regarding their emotions, relationship quality, sense of power, and perspective taking (See attached excel file for variables). After the conversations, participants also separately completed a perspective taking task designed to assess how well they were able to take their partner's perspective on a variety of different topics. Six months after the completion of the lab study, both partners separately completed a longitudinal follow-up survey with questions about their relationships. This study was completed at the University of California, Berkeley. IRB approval number: 2010-05-1425.