Campus Access Only
All rights reserved. This publication is intended for use solely by faculty, students, and staff of University of the Pacific. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, now known or later developed, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author or the publisher.
Date of Award
2012
Document Type
Thesis - Pacific Access Restricted
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Scott Jensen
First Committee Member
Carolyn Kohn
Second Committee Member
Deborah Schooler
Abstract
Studies have identified links between anxiety and couple communication, anxiety and pronoun use as well as pronoun use and communication. The current study investigated the association between pronoun use and communication in the context of anxiety. One hundred and fifteen couples rated their communication with their partner and participated in two seven-minute problem-solving discussions, which were analyzed using a linguistic word count program. Results indicate that the use of I was not associated with ratings of communication whereas use of You by either partner was related to lower ratings of communication by both men and women. Moreover, the results of several moderation analyses suggest the association between women's (but not men's) ratings of communication and men's and women's use of You and men's I was moderated by both men's and women's anxiety. Women's anxiety moderated the relationship between both partner's use of You and women's rating of couple communication and men's anxiety moderated the relationship between men's use of You and I and women's view of couple communication. The hypothesis that pronoun use mediates the relationship between anxiety and couple communication was not supported. Implications are discussed.
Pages
116
ISBN
9781267734327
Recommended Citation
Biesen, Judith N.. (2012). You and I—pronoun use and communication patterns in anxious couples. University of the Pacific, Thesis - Pacific Access Restricted. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/313
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
To access this thesis/dissertation you must have a valid pacific.edu email address and log-in to Scholarly Commons.
Find in PacificSearch Find in ProQuestIf you are the author and would like to grant permission to make your work openly accessible, please email
Rights Statement
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
