51. PREPRINT: Contact and Psychological Adjustment following Divorce/Separation
- Author
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Matthias R. Mehl, Allison Mary Tackman, Austin M. Grinberg, Karey L. O'Hara, and David A. Sbarra
- Subjects
Divorce/separation ,Psychology ,Developmental psychology - Abstract
This study examined the association between naturalistically-observed in-person contact with one’s ex-partner and separation-related psychological distress (SRPD). 122 recently separated adults were assessed using the Electronically Activated Recorder (Mehl, 2017) on three occasions across five months. The association between in-person contact with one’s expartner, as a between-person variable, and concurrent SRPD was not reliably different from zero, nor was the time-varying effect of in-person contact. However, more frequent in-person contact with one’s ex-partner predicted higher SRPD two months later, above and beyond the variance accounted for by oncurrent in-person contact, demographic, relationship, and attachment factors. Follow-up analyses yielded that this effect was only present for people without children; a one standard deviation increase in in-person contact offset and slowed the predicted decline in SRPD over two months by 112%. Our discussion emphasizes new ways to think about the role of interpersonal contact in shaping adults’ psychological adjustment to separation over time.
- Published
- 2019