Social Anxiety and Depression in Romantic Relationships: A Three-Sample Exploration.

Introduction: Social anxiety contributes to a variety of interpersonal difficulties and dysfunctions. Socially anxious adults are less likely to marry and more likely to divorce than are non-anxious adults. The present pre-registered study investigated incremental variance accounted for by social anxiety in relationship satisfaction, commitment, trust, and social support. Methods: Three independent samples of adults (N = 888; 53.7% female; Mage = 35.09 years) involved in a romantic relationship completed online self-report questionnaires. Both social anxiety and depression were significantly correlated with relationship satisfaction, commitment, dyadic trust, and social support. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted with each sample to investigate the incremental variance accounted for by each of social anxiety and depression in relationship satisfaction, commitment, dyadic trust, and social support. Subsequent meta-analyses were run to determine the strength and replicability of the hierarchical models. Results: Results suggest that social anxiety is a robust predictor of unique variance in both perceived social support and commitment. Depression was a robust predictor of unique variance in relationship satisfaction, dyadic trust, social support, and commitment. Discussion: These results help to further understanding of social anxiety in romantic relationships and provide direction for future research and clinical intervention.

Dyadic trust as a mediator in the association between posttraumatic stress symptoms and relationship distress in community couples

Background: Trust is an important component in romantic relationships. However, posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) can alter an individual’s appraisal of others resulting in difficulties with interpersonal trust. Indeed, prior literature has established associations between PTSS and trust, and relations between trust and relationship distress. Even so, there is a dearth of research examining the association between PTSS and trust specifically within ones’ romantic relationship as well as how dyadic trust may help explain the relation between PTSS and overall relationship distress. Method: This study examined a sample of 57 opposite-sex adult community couples where at least one partner had a lifetime history of trauma-exposure. Mediated actor-partner interdependence modeling (APIMeM) examined the intraindividual and interpersonal pathways in the association between PTSS and relationship distress as well as potential sex differences. Results: Findings demonstrated actor and partner effects between dyadic trust and relationship distress; however, males’ dyadic trust was only marginally associated with their female partners’ relationship distress. Sex differences were demonstrated in the relation between PTSS and dyadic trust whereby females’ dyadic trust was related to their own and their partners’ PTSS. There was a partner effect between females’ PTSS on their male partners’ relationship distress but not from males’ PTSS to females’ relationship distress. Finally, females’ dyadic trust was supported as a full mediator between PTSS and relationship distress for all pathways in the model. Conclusion: There is a unique effect of females’ dyadic trust on the relation of PTSS and relationship distress. Future directions and clinical implications are discussed.

A Comparative Analysis of the Levels of Collective Trust among the Banking Staff in Poland and Russia

This article aims to analyze the levels of collective trust in banks in Poland and Russia. These are post-socialist countries and emerging markets and yet there are large discrepancies in the mentality of the respective labour markets. The hypothesis is that collective trust in banks in Russia is lower than in Poland. This has to do with the high level of declarative trust proclaimed by the Russian employees. Moreover, trust is inversely proportional to the level of education. 1,920 bank employees were surveyed in Poland and 359 in Russia. Then the overall indexes of trust in banks and sub-indexes (loyalty; care; openness; dyadic trust; honesty/fairness; common values; appreciation; job security) were calculated.

Do Trust and Sexual Intimacy Mediate Attachment’s Pathway Toward Sexual Violence Occurring in Same Sex Romantic Relationships?

This study tested a serial mediation model examining how dyadic trust and sexual intimacy mediate the relationship between insecure romantic attachment and perpetrated sexual violence occurring between same sex intimate partners (sexual SSIPV). A community sample of adults ( N = 310; 203 women, 107 men) involved in a committed (6 months or longer) same sex romantic relationship completed an encrypted online questionnaire package which included psychometric measures designed to assess the aforementioned variables. Controlling for gender effects, analyses conducted using bootstrapping procedures supported full mediation pathways for both attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. That is, attachment anxiety and avoidance were both directly associated to the perpetration of sexual SSIPV, and these relationships were both fully mediated by dyadic trust and sexual intimacy, in that respective order.

Communication satisfaction and trust among Turkish adolescent siblings

The relationships that exist among brothers and sisters have been much less researched and observed than other kinds of family relationships. Thus, the impact of sibling dyads' gender and age difference on Turkish adolescents' communication satisfaction and trust was examined. The sample consisted of 272 (154 female, 118 male) Turkish high school students, all of whom were aged between 14 and 18 years and had 1 younger sibling. They were asked to complete the Sibling Communication Satisfaction Scale and the Dyadic Trust Scale. A significant gender difference was obtained for both trust and communication satisfaction, wherein females were more likely than males were to trust and be satisfied with their level of communication with their siblings, especially in the case of same-gender siblings. However, no significant result was found for age difference in terms of either trust or communication satisfaction.

The Influence of Emotion on Trust

Political scientists frequently wish to test hypotheses about the effects of specific emotions on political behavior. However, commonly used experimental manipulations tend to have collateral effects on emotions other than the targeted emotion, making it difficult to ascribe outcomes to any single emotion. In this letter, we propose to address this problem using causal mediation analysis. We illustrate this approach using an experiment examining the effect of emotion on dyadic trust, as measured by the trust game. Our findings suggest that negative emotions can decrease trust, but only if those negative emotions make people feel less certain about their current situation. Our results suggest that only anxiety, a low-certainty emotion, has a negative impact on trust, whereas anger and guilt, two emotions that differ in their control appraisals but induce the same high level of certainty, appear to have no effect on trusting behavior. Importantly, we find that failing to use causal mediation analysis would ascribe apositiveeffect of anxiety on trust, demonstrating the value of this approach.