Tailoring dyadic coping strategies to attachment style: Emotion-focused and problem-focused dyadic coping differentially buffer anxiously and avoidantly attached partners

Attachment insecurity is associated with lower satisfaction and lower felt security in romantic relationships, especially during times of stress such as coping with a global pandemic. Heightened external stressors for couples are associated with poorer relationship quality, but how couples cope with stress together, or their dyadic coping strategies, is associated with the maintenance of relationship satisfaction. In the current study, we followed 184 couples living together during the COVID-19 pandemic to test whether specific coping strategies buffered people higher in attachment anxiety and avoidance from lower satisfaction and felt security in the early weeks and ensuing months of the pandemic. Our findings demonstrate that perceiving more emotion-focused dyadic coping—being affectionate and using intimacy—buffered the negative association between attachment anxiety and relationship satisfaction and felt security, both concurrently and over several months of the pandemic. In addition, problem-focused perceived dyadic coping backfired for people higher in attachment anxiety;they felt less satisfied when they perceived more problem-focused coping—which involves being solution-focused and using instrumental support—in their relationship. In contrast, people higher in attachment avoidance were buffered against lower relationship satisfaction when they perceived more problem-focused dyadic coping and were not buffered by emotion-focused coping. The current findings suggest the importance of tailoring coping strategies to a partner's attachment style for relationship quality and felt security during times of stress.

Responsiveness in the Face of Sexual Challenges: The Role of Sexual Growth and Destiny Beliefs.

Implicit--or lay--sexual beliefs have been associated with how people respond to sexual challenges in romantic relationships. People who endorse sexual destiny beliefs view a satisfying sex life as the result of finding the right partner and report poorer sexual, relationship, and personal well-being when there are sexual challenges. In comparison, people who endorse sexual growth beliefs view satisfying sexual relationships as requiring hard work and effort to maintain and tend to report high sexual, relationship, and personal well-being even when facing sexual challenges. High sexual responsiveness - being motivated to meet a partner's sexual needs - is associated with maintaining high sexual satisfaction, even when couples face sexual challenges in a relationship. In the current research, we tested whether sexual growth and destiny beliefs are associated with general and sexual responsiveness and whether the associations are moderated by the presence of sexual challenges. Across three (clinical and non-clinical) samples (N = 820) facing different types of sexual challenges (Study 1 (Mage = 31.64, SD = 8.53), clinically low sexual desire; Studies 2 (Mage = 32.63, SD = 10.19) and 3 (Mage = 32.40, SD = 9.31), unmet sexual ideals; Study 3, changes in sex since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic), we found that sexual growth beliefs were associated with higher sexual responsiveness and perceived partner sexual and general responsiveness, even when couples were coping with sexual challenges, whereas sexual destiny beliefs were not associated with responsiveness, and at times were associated with lower sexual responsiveness and perceived partner sexual and general responsiveness. This research provides initial evidence about how implicit sexual beliefs are associated with sexual and general responsiveness when couples are coping with sexual challenges in a romantic relationship.

Tailoring dyadic coping strategies to attachment style: Emotion-focused and problem-focused dyadic coping differentially buffer anxiously and avoidantly attached partners

Attachment insecurity is associated with lower satisfaction and lower felt security in romantic relationships, especially during times of stress such as coping with a global pandemic. Heightened external stressors for couples are associated with poorer relationship quality, but how couples cope with stress together, or their dyadic coping strategies, is associated with the maintenance of relationship satisfaction. In the current study, we followed 184 couples living together during the COVID-19 pandemic to test whether specific coping strategies buffered people higher in attachment anxiety and avoidance from lower satisfaction and felt security in the early weeks and ensuing months of the pandemic. Our findings demonstrate that perceiving more emotion-focused dyadic coping—being affectionate and using intimacy—buffered the negative association between attachment anxiety and relationship satisfaction and felt security, both concurrently and over several months of the pandemic. In addition, problem-focused perceived dyadic coping backfired for people higher in attachment anxiety;they felt less satisfied when they perceived more problem-focused coping—which involves being solution-focused and using instrumental support—in their relationship. In contrast, people higher in attachment avoidance were buffered against lower relationship satisfaction when they perceived more problem-focused dyadic coping and were not buffered by emotion-focused coping. The current findings suggest the importance of tailoring coping strategies to a partner’s attachment style for relationship quality and felt security during times of stress. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Social & Personal Relationships is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Sexual Desire in the Time of COVID-19: How COVID-Related Stressors Are Associated with Sexual Desire in Romantic Relationships.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting social distancing measures have caused widespread social and economic disruptions, resulting in spikes in unemployment and financial instability, along with drastic changes to people's ability to feel socially connected. Many of the changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic are risk factors for depressive symptoms, which are associated with lower levels of sexual desire. The current research (N = 4,993) examined whether responses to external stressors brought on by COVID-19 (i.e., financial concern, worry, loneliness, stress) were associated with sexual desire among a multi-national sample of people in relationships (Studies 1-2), and whether this association was, in part, due to reports of depressive symptoms (Study 2). In the period immediately following the onset of the pandemic, more financial concern (Study 1) and worry (Study 2) were associated with higher sexual desire, while other factors, like stress (Studies 1-2), were associated with lower desire. We also followed a subset of participants every two weeks during the initial stages of the pandemic and at times when people reported greater stress, loneliness, financial strain, or worry than their average, they reported greater depressive symptoms, which was, in turn, associated with lower sexual desire. Results suggest that the social isolation and stress resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have mixed associations with sexual desire at the onset of the pandemic. But over time, when people report heightened COVID-related stressors, they tend to report lower sexual desire for their partner, in part because these stressors are associated with more depressive symptoms.

Feeling Appreciated Buffers Against the Negative Effects of Unequal Division of Household Labor on Relationship Satisfaction.

Decades of research from across the globe highlight unequal and unfair division of household labor as a key factor that leads to relationship distress and demise. But does it have to? Testing a priori predictions across three samples of individuals cohabiting with a romantic partner during the COVID-19 pandemic (N = 2,193, including 476 couples), we found an important exception to this rule. People who reported doing more of the household labor and who perceived the division as more unfair were less satisfied across the early weeks and ensuing months of the pandemic, but these negative effects disappeared when people felt appreciated by their partners. Feeling appreciated also appeared to buffer against the negative effects of doing less, suggesting that feeling appreciated may offset the relational costs of unequal division of labor, regardless of who contributes more. These findings generalized across gender, employment status, age, socioeconomic status, and relationship length.

"Zooming" Our Way through Virtual Undergraduate Research Training: A Successful Redesign of the CONSERVE Summer Internship Program.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on education globally, forcing the teaching community to think outside the box and create innovative educational plans to benefit students at home. Here, we narrate how the undergraduate, laboratory-based Summer Internship Program of our CONSERVE Center of Excellence, which focuses heavily on engaging women and underrepresented minorities in STEM programming, took a turn from an in-person research experience to a fully virtual one. We share our challenges and how we overcame them. Additionally, we provide a description of our virtual internship professional development curriculum, as well as the creative research projects that our seven interns were able to achieve in an 8-week virtual internship, including projects focused on the microbiological water quality of recycled irrigation water; social media promotion, enhancement and marketing of online educational resources focused on water, microbial contamination, and food crop irrigation; decision support systems for using recycled water in agricultural settings; and the effectiveness of zero-valent iron sand filtration in improving agricultural water quality, to name a few. Upon evaluating our internship program, we observed that more than 80% of our interns were either very satisfied or satisfied with the overall virtual internship experience. Through this experience, both the educators and the interns learned that although a virtual laboratory internship cannot completely replace in-person learning, it can still result in a very meaningful educational experience.

Pivoting to online laboratories due to COVID-19 using the “Science of Agriculture” digital tools: A case study

ABSTRACT On March 12, 2020 Dickinson State University moved all classes to distance delivery (DD) in response to COVID-19. Faculty had only a brief opportunity to plan, as the turn-around to DD was very rapid. Meaningful laboratory exercises were needed for SOIL 210 ? Introduction to Soil Science. The senior author learned about the Science of Agriculture (SoA) website on a discussion board created by the Soil Science Society of America, which provided links to distance education resources. Most of the resources from SoA addressed topics still to be covered in SOIL 210, and four of the semester's final six labs were developed using SoA: Understanding Data and Chemistry, Soil Chemistry, Dryland Soils, and Microbiology and Nitrogen. Materials available on the SoA website include video clips, interactive exercises, and virtual labs. While the virtual labs, with the exception of Sorption!, are not soil science focused, they cover basic skills that soil scientists use. Each of the four labs utilized four to eight of the activities (video clips, interactives, and/or virtual labs) available on SoA, depending on the length of time each activity was expected to take and the number of activities available for the given topic. Students were asked to answer specific questions related to their lab experience with the digital activities. SoA provided useful tools to develop meaningful experiences for the SOIL 210 students in lieu of their traditional laboratory exercises. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved