Negative Emotion Mediates Associations between Rumination and Use of Romantic Conflict Strategies

Abstract

This longitudinal study examined associations between rumination and the use of conflict strategies in college student relationships and whether negative emotion mediated this link. During college, romantic relationships become more intimate, serious, and longer-lasting but are also characterized by greater conflict. Conflict resolution skills developed during this period may contribute to healthier committed future relationships, so it is important to better understand predictors of conflict strategies for these couples. Known predictors of conflict strategies include self-reported negative emotions and emotion regulation skills. A common maladaptive emotion regulation strategy is rumination, but no research has examined whether rumination predicts the use of conflict strategies in romantic relationships. Because rumination is strongly associated with more negative emotion (i.e., anger and sadness), it may be an important contributor to the use of maladaptive conflict strategies. Anger and sadness are particularly common negative emotions during relationship conflict and are strongly related to the use of certain maladaptive conflict strategies within couples. We hypothesized that higher levels of trait rumination would be associated with more maladaptive conflict strategies (e.g., greater verbal aggression, withdrawal, and compliance and less positive problem-solving) two weeks later; and that greater negative emotion at the second assessment would mediate these associations. We tested these hypotheses using depressive rumination and relational rumination (a recently developed construct).