Research Statement
My research interests are broadly focused on interpersonal relationships, happiness, and cultural diversity. Within interpersonal relationships, I am specifically interested in couple rituals, commitment, infidelity, and marriage. I enjoy studying how each of these topics varies by culture, not only within North America, but also across the world. My goal is to understand how evolutionary mechanisms interact with sociocultural practices to influence the development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships. As such, my research is generally guided by theories of evolutionary psychology, symbolic interaction, and social exchange. I consider myself a mixed methods researcher and have experience with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies.
Past Research
At The University of British Columbia, I examined the relationship between couple rituals and commitment in premarital relationships (Campbell & Ponzetti, 2007). Prior to this research, little was known about the role of rituals in unmarried relationships because studies on this topic had been focused on marital and family relationships (Berg-Cross, Daniels, & Carr, 1992; Bruess & Pearson, 1997; Doherty, 2001; Fiese, Tomcho, Douglas, Josephs, Poltrock, & Baker, 2002). Results of my study indicated that the association between rituals and commitment was mediated by the Investment Model variables (Rusbult, 1983) of relationship satisfaction, quality of alternatives, and investment size. Part of this study involved creating the Couple Rituals Scale, which I further developed and validated during my doctoral studies.
Recent Research
While pursuing my Ph.D. at the University of Georgia, I continued to develop my program of research on couple rituals and commitment. First, I conducted a qualitative study to identify the specific types of rituals enacted within unmarried couple relationships (Campbell, Silva, & Wright, under review). Next, I designed a mixed methods study to refine and validate the Couple Rituals Scale. During this time, I noticed that interpersonal researchers were conceptualizing repeated and meaningful behaviors as four distinct constructs: couple rituals (Berg-Cross, Daniels, & Carr, 1992; Bruess & Pearson, 1997), behavioral indicators of commitment (Weigel & Ballard-Reisch, 2002), couple behaviors (Shumway & Wampler, 2002), and relationship maintenance behaviors (Canary & Stafford, 1994). In order to examine the similarities and differences among these constructs, I designed a third study that involved a theoretical and empirical comparison of the four constructs. Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, we determined that these constructs overlap considerably and should be conceptualized together in future research. The final project involved working with Dr. Kostas Kafetsios at the University of Crete in Greece to refine a measure he had developed for assessing partners’ perceptions of emotions within couple relationships.
My dissertation was a mixed methods study that examined newlyweds’ conceptions of marriage, including their perceptions of infidelity and divorce. Two hundred and seventy-six newlywed individuals completed an online qualitative assessment, and a subset of 213 completed quantitative assessments. Marriage was primarily conceptualized in terms of love, friendship, and lifelong commitment. Individuals were more likely to hold conservative views of marriage if they were highly religious, Republican, had emotionally stable personalities, and if they had not experienced premarital cohabitation and/or sex. Approximately 50% of newlyweds expected to experience infidelity and 72% indicated some expectation of divorce. They were less likely to expect infidelity if they were religious and more likely to expect it if they believed their spouse would engage in extramarital sex. They were more likely to expect divorce if they had less agreeable personalities, if their parents had divorced, and if they had low levels of relationship satisfaction and/or commitment. My dissertation was supported by a $1,000 grant that was awarded by the Graduate School at the University of Georgia.
Future Research
In the years ahead, I will continue building on my program of research. Specifically, I will use the Couple Rituals Scale to examine how rituals impact partners’ relational identities and protect them from infidelity. I am also interested in how intercultural couples form and maintain their rituals, given that partners must negotiate rituals from not only their families of origin, but also their different cultural backgrounds. I will expand on my dissertation topic as well by exploring cultural variations in marital conceptualizations and how infidelity and divorce are perceived in different cultures. For example, what does marriage mean to people in different parts of the world and how do the concepts of commitment, infidelity, and divorce fit (or not fit) into people’s marital schemas? I will focus on cultural groups within North America, but will continue my collaborations with researchers at foreign universities to understand this topic worldwide. Finally, I plan to research personal and dyadic happiness and how individualism influences perceptions of happiness.