Benevolent Sexism, Attachment Style, and Contingent Self-Esteem Help to Explain How People Anticipate Responding to a Troubled Romantic Relationship

Abstract

The current research examined how benevolent sexism and romantic attachment work in concert with contingent self-esteem to explain the strategies people anticipate using when asked to envision themselves in a high-conflict heterosexual romantic relationship. Study 1 (N = 158) demonstrated that when women were presented with a hypothetical description of a troubled romantic relationship, they reported a greater desire to maintain the relationship via prosocial strategies (e.g., emphasizing commitment to the partner) when the man in the relationship was described as endorsing benevolent sexism as compared to a control condition. Additional analyses revealed that women's relationship-contingent self-esteem mediated the association between their benevolent sexism and their desire to employ maladaptive relationship maintenance strategies (e.g., making the partner jealous) within the context of the troubled relationship. Study 2 (N = 190) built on the findings from Study 1 in two ways. First, we expanded the Study 1 mediation model to include romantic attachment (alongside benevolent sexism) as an exogenous predictor. Second, we included both women and men in the sample to examine whether the hypothesized relations were moderated by gender. Findings illustrated that anxious attachment indirectly predicted participants’ anticipated use of negative relationship maintenance strategies via relationship-contingent self-esteem. The magnitude of these relations was comparable for women and men. Together, findings from the two studies provide insight into why people vary in their responses to relationships characterized by high levels of conflict.