Relationship satisfaction mediates the association between perceived partner mate retention strategies and relationship
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Relationship satisfaction mediates the association between perceived partner mate retention strategies and relationship commitment Bruna Nascimento 1
&
Anthony Little 2
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This study investigated whether relationship satisfaction mediates the association between own and perceived partner materetention strategies and commitment. One hundred and fifty individuals (Mage = 23.87, SDage = 7.28; 78.7% women) in a committed relationship participated in this study. We found an association between perceived partner mate-retention strategies and commitment and that relationship satisfaction mediated this link. Similarly, we found that relationship satisfaction also mediated the association between individuals’ own cost-inflicting strategies and commitment. Specifically, perceived partner benefit-provisioning strategies are positively associated with commitment through increased relationship satisfaction and, conversely, both perceived partner and own cost-inflicting strategies are negatively associated with commitment through decreased relationship satisfaction. Additionally, we observed that relationship satisfaction moderated the association between perceived partner cost-inflicting strategies and participants’ own frequency of cost-inflicting strategies. That is, participants’ cost inflicting strategies are associated with their partner’s cost inflicting strategies, such that this association is stronger among individuals with higher relationship satisfaction. The current research extends previous findings by demonstrating that the association between perceived partner and own mate-retention strategies and commitment is mediated by relationship satisfaction. Additionally, we showed that an individual’s expression of mate retention is associated with their perception of the strategies displayed by their partner, which also depends on relationship satisfaction. Keywords Mate retention . Relationship satisfaction . Commitment . Mediation
Long-term relationships evolved as a solution to solve multiple adaptive problems1 such as acquiring sufficient parental investment, acquiring different types of investment, and maintaining female fecundity (i.e. capacity for reproduction; Salmon 2017). The game-theoretic model (Conroy-Beam et al. 2015) proposes that long-term relationships can be understood as public goods games, in which players invest
1 Adaptive problems are defined as problems faced by a species repeatedly during its evolutionary history that affected survival and reproduction (Tooby and Cosmides 2005).
* Bruna Nascimento [email protected] 1
Department of Life Sciences, Division of Psychology, Brunel University London, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, UK
2
Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, UK
resources into a shared pool. According to this model, both partners independently invest their resources in the relationship that returns fitness2 dividends to both. For instance, partners invest in shared pools such as shared financial resources, shared social networks, an
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