Using the relational turbulence model to understand negative emotion within courtship

We employ the relational turbulence model to deduce hypotheses about how intimacy, relational uncertainty, and interference and facilitation from partners predict people's experience of negative emotion. We test our hypotheses using data from a self-report, cross-sectional study of 525 individuals involved in dating relationships. Results indicated that intimacy shared very small convex curvilinear associations with anger, sadness, fear, and jealousy (H1). Relational uncertainty and interference from partners were positively correlated with negative emotion (H2, H3), and facilitation from partners was negatively correlated with negative emotion (H4). Also as expected, relational uncertainty and interference from partners mediated the association between intimacy and negative emotion (H5). We interpret how our findings shed light on people's experience of negative emotion within courtship.