Retracted: The Development of Willingness to Sacrifice and Unmitigated Communion in Intimate Partnerships

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12455
• Author: Rebecca M. Horne,Franz J. Neyer,Matthew D. Johnson
• Published date: 01 June 2018
• Date: 01 June 2018

RETRACTED

M D. J University of Alberta

R M. H University of Alberta∗

F J. N Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena∗∗

The Development of Willingness to Sacrice and

Unmitigated Communion in Intimate Partnerships

Rooted in a relational developmental systems

perspective and drawing on German Family

Panel data from 3,405 focal participants and

their partners surveyed for 7 years, this study

examined developmental trajectories of willing-

ness to sacrice and unmitigated communion,

or putting a partner’s needs above one’s own

to the exclusion of the self. Findings revealed

each construct followed a declining curvilin-

ear pattern with much variability underlying

average trajectories. Women, those with more

prior partnerships, and those in longer term

relationships were less willing to sacrice and

had lower unmitigated communion at baseline.

Participants were more willing to sacrice

when they were more committed, when they and

their partners were happier with the union, and

when household income was lower.Unmitigated

Department of Human Ecology, Universityof Alberta, 302

Human Ecology Building, Edmonton, AB T6G 2N1,

Canada (matt.johnson@ualberta.ca).

∗Department of Human Ecology, Universityof Alberta, 302

Human Ecology Building, Edmonton, AB T6G 2N1,

Canada. Current address: Department of Psychology,

University of Toronto,100 St. George Street, Sidney Smith

Hall 4th Floor, Toronto,ON M58 3G3, Canada.

∗∗Department of Psychology, Friedrich-Schiller-

Universität Jena, Humboldtstraße 11, Raum 118, 07743

Jena, Germany.

Key Words: commitment, couple relations, life span theory,

longitudinal, relationship cognitions, relationship develop-

ment.

communion was higher when participants were

more committed and more insecure in their

partner’s love. Willingness to sacrice and

unmitigated communion develop in response to

sociodemographics, personal history, and both

partners’ relationship cognitions.

The willingness to sacrice immediate desires

to benet one’s intimate partner or relationship

has proven a critical component for the attain-

ment of lasting love. Much sophisticated work

has examined the impact of sacrice on couple

relations, nding greater willingness to and

satisfaction with sacrice exhibited robust links

with more satisfying and stable couple unions

(e.g., Stanley, Whitton, Sadberry, Clements,

& Markman, 2006; Van Lange et al., 1997),

especially when the sacrice is prompted by a

genuine desire to please one’spartner or improve

the relationship (Impett, Gable, & Peplau, 2005;

Impett, Gere, Kogan, Gordon, & Keltner, 2013).

Sacrice has a particularly potent impact on

couple relations because it provides a clear

signal of one’s commitment (Stanley, Rhoades,

& Whitton, 2010; Van Lange et al., 1997).

Indeed, when partners believe the other is will-

ing to sacrice, trust and commitment increases,

prompting a greater willingness to sacrice

and increased pro-relationship acts, setting a

mutual cyclical growth process into motion

(Wieselquist, Rusbult, Foster, & Agnew, 1999).

Forgoing one’s own self-interest for a partner

is certainly an important contributor to satisfying

Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (June 2018): 637–652 637

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12455

RETRACTED

638 Journal of Marriage and Family

couple relations, but sacrice does not always

benet relationships. Sacrices made to avoid

a negative event, such as conict with a partner

(Impett et al., 2005, 2013), and believing sacri-

ces are personally harmful (Whitton, Stanley,

& Markman, 2007) may erode relationship

quality. Along these lines, oversacricing for

one’s partner may also represent one aspect

of sacrice that is not a boon to relational

health. Personality psychologists have long

examined people’s tendency to oversacrice

(outside the context of couple unions), referred

to as unmitigated communion, or a tendency

to excessively put the needs of others above

one’s own to the exclusion of the self (Helgeson

& Fritz, 1998). Unmitigated communion was

associated with reduced individual well-being

in prior research, including low self-esteem and

heightened depression (Fritz & Helgeson, 1998)

and poorer physical health (Helgeson, Swanson,

Ra, Randall, & Zhao, 2015). Despite compelling

arguments articulating its salience for couple

unions (Impett & Gordon, 2008), unmitigated

communion is yet to be examined in the context

of couple relations, representing an important

and novel contribution of this study.

Given the importance of willingness to sac-

rice and unmitigated communion for personal

and relationship well-being, understanding their

developmental trajectories and the factors that

motivate growth in each is essential to further

articulate how couples might achieve lasting

love. Yet we could locate no research with this

aim. Drawing on developmental theory and

four waves of survey data provided by 3,405

focal participants, referred to as anchors, and

their partners in the German Family Panel (pair-

fam; Brüderl et al., 2016), this study examines

trajectories of intimate partnership-oriented

willingness to sacrice (“I am usually willing

to sacrice my own desires for my partner”)

and unmitigated communion (“Often, I leave

everything else aside to support my partner”)

and whether gender moderates these trajectories

and explores covariates that might shape the

development of these constructs.

B

Theoretical Framework

A relational developmental systems (RDS;

Lerner, Agans, DeSouza, & Gasca, 2013;

Lerner, Johnson, & Buckingham, 2015)per-

spective guides our examination of willingness

to sacrice and unmitigated communion tra-

jectories and the factors that may impact these

developmental processes. At its core, a RDS

perspective stresses that development is driven

by the recurrent, mutual inuence between indi-

viduals and the many environments in which

they exist. To achieve the RDS stated goal

of unearthing knowledge that can lead to the

optimization of human development (Lerner

et al., 2013), research must rst describe and

explain various aspects of human development.

The description of human development involves

examining change processes reected in indi-

vidual trajectories observed across time, which

may feature elements of growth, decline, or

stability and exploring whether developmental

processes unfold in concert with one another or

assume generally distinct patterns.

Applied to the present study, a RDS perspec-

tive motivates the need to understand how will-

ingness to sacrice and unmitigated communion

develop while considering whether the trajecto-

ries of these relationship cognitions are linked.

We could locate no research examining the

long-term development of these variables. The

longitudinal work in this area has examined the

interrelation of sacrice with relational and indi-

vidual constructs using daily diary (Helgeson

et al., 2015; Impett et al., 2005; Ruppel & Cur-

ran, 2012) and panel data (M. D. Johnson &

Horne, 2016) or has examined consequences of

unmitigated communion and sacrice on future

personal and relational well-being (Aubé, 2008;

Impett et al., 2005, 2013; Stanley, Whitton,

et al., 2006; Van Lange et al., 1997). The data

contain four biennial assessments of willingness

to sacrice and unmitigated communion from a

large, diverse sample of partnered individuals,

making them ideally suited for examining the

longer term development of each construct.

Development does not transpire in isolation,

and explaining human development necessitates

consideration of intrapersonal and contextual

factors that motivate change. One proximal and

enduring contextual factor is an intimate partner,

as couple ties are characterized by high levels of

contact, emotional connectedness, and interde-

pendence (Huston, 2000). In the present work,

an RDS perspective not only leads us to consider

whether anchors’ past experiences (number of

prior intimate partnerships), sociodemographic

characteristics (e.g., gender, relationship length,

household income, number of children, and

relationship status), and relationship-oriented