Abstract:
Conflicting evidence has found that Positive Partner Illusions (PPIs) can be both beneficial and detrimental to relationship functioning and individual growth. The benefits of PPIs in some cases have been found to improve symptoms of depression and social anxiety. We hypothesized that individuals with social anxiety would experience a greater reduction in symptoms when receiving higher PPIs compared to individuals with depression. We also hypothesized that greater overlapping schemas (Inclusion of Other in Self; IOS) and lower discrepancies between how an individual’s partner sees them and how they see themselves (discrepancy scores; DS) would predict greater reductions in social anxiety and depression symptoms. A cross-sectional (Study 1) and longitudinal (Study 2) study were conducted to analyze these hypotheses. Both Study 1 (N = 296 couples) and Study 2 (N = 80) utilized self-report measures to analyze the actor’s depression, social anxiety, social comparison self-ratings, IOS (a scale that measures how close one feels to their partner), relationship quality, and the partner’s social comparison ratings of the actor. As expected, PPI’s were associated with increases in social comparison self-rating scores in the cross-sectional study. However, PPIs were negatively correlated with depression and social anxiety in both studies, as well as with social comparison self-ratings over time. Moreover, our cross-sectional study found that there is not a significant difference between the benefits that socially anxious individuals and depressed individuals received from PPIs.
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