Autonomous Motivation, Projection and Stress as Predictors of Romantic Relationship Quality

Research SummaryThe research sought to expand our knowledge concerning the effects of autonomous and controlled romantic motivations on couples' relationship and the various processes through which these motivations affect relationships. Special attention was given to the role of the process of social-projection and its relations with motivation and quality of romantic and marital relationship. Hypotheses were tested on three samples: dating couples, married couples expecting their first child, and married couples 8 and 18 month after the birth of their first child.

The first phase of the research involved an extensive process of scale construction and validation. Then, these scales were used in both concurrent and longitudinal analyses. Results of both types of analyses supported the hypothesis that autonomous motivation would be positively associated with relationship quality variables, whereas the reverse pattern would be occur with regard to controlled motivation.

The research focused on the following questions:

Would prenatal autonomous motivation positively predict postnatal romantic relationship quality?

Would prenatal controlled motivation negatively predict postnatal romantic relationship quality?

Would prenatal controlled motivation predict postnatal projection?

Would postnatal projection predict postnatal romantic relationship quality?

Would postnatal projection mediate the association between prenatal controlled motivation and postnatal relationship quality?

Results

Intercorrelations between relationship motivation and relationship quality presented in table 3. Results indicate that autonomous motivation is positively associated with all relationship quality variables. Contrary, controlled motivation was not found to correlate with relationship quality.