Berkeley Couples Study, 2008

80 romantic couples (N = 160) from the San Francisco Bay Area (including UC Berkeley students) enrolled in a study with: (1) baseline survey measures, (2) lab interactions (sacrifice, suffering, and love), (3) a 14-day daily experience study and (4) a three-month longitudinal follow-up survey. To be eligible, they must have been at least 18 years old and in a romantic relationship for a minimum of 6 months. On average, participants were in their mid 20s (range 18-60), had been involved in their romantic relationship for a medium length of 15 months, 53% were European or European American, and 75 out of the 80s couples were heterosexual. Participants independently completed a 45-minute online questionnaire in the days prior to their first 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 after each conversation. Topics were: - A major sacrifice they had made for their partner over the course of their relationship (sacrifice conversation). - A disclosure of a time of personal suffering (suffering conversation). - A time when they had experience a great deal of love for their partner (love conversation) For the subsequent two weeks (14 nights), couple-members independently completed a brief nightly questionnaire about their day (including personal well-being and interactions with the partner, with many questions about daily sacrifices). Three months after the completion of the diary part of the study, both partners separately completed a longitudinal follow-up survey with questions about their relationships. Participants in this study also provided saliva samples that were used for genotyping. This study was approved by the University of California, Berkeley Institutional Review Board (ethics number not known)