Implicit partner evaluations: How they form and what they do to relationships.

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The assessment of implicit partner evaluations has been recently shown to be of key importance for relationship science. Implicit partner evaluations (i.e., spontaneous feelings toward one's partner) can predict later relationship satisfaction when explicit evaluations (i.e., self-report evaluations) fail to do so (e.g., McNulty et al., 2013). Although previous research has shown the longitudinal implications of implicit partner evaluations on relationship well-being, little is known about which relationship dynamics are likely to influence changes in implicit partner evaluations and why implicit partner evaluations have such a strong influence on relationship well-being over time. The present proposal addresses these questions in three subprojects. The first subproject assesses which relationship dynamics are likely to have a particular impact on implicit partner evaluations. The second subproject assesses whether implicit partner evaluations affect dyadic processes through their influence on non-verbal behavior. Finally, the third subproject assesses the consequences of having divergent implicit and explicit partner evaluations, a state called implicit ambivalence (Petty, Tormala, Brinol, & Jarvis, 2006), for the individual and the relationship well-being. In two PhD projects, we will make use of diverse methodologies (i.e., large scale diary studies, questionnaires, videotaped interactions, laboratory experiments) to investigate these ideas.