Our magnificent lab manager of 3 years, Daniela Esquivel Cantu, is finishing her time with us. This Fall she will be starting the PhD program in Social Psychology at the University of Houston. Daniela has been project manager for multiple major studies in the lab, including EFP, NPP, and COPE, and has been invaluable to their success. Best of luck in grad school Daniela!
The Williamson Lab has a new article published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. Using data from 2,347 individuals in romantic relationships across Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States, we examine how relationship attributions, the explanations partners give for each other’s negative behavior, vary across countries and how strongly they predict relationship satisfaction. Levels of dispositional and blaming attributions differed significantly by country, and so did their link to satisfaction: Taiwanese participants reported the highest levels of these attributions but showed the weakest association with dissatisfaction, despite this being a strong predictor of dissatisfaction in U.S.-based research.
Congrats to graduate student Jayda Branch for presenting her research entitled “Perceived Tangible Support as a Buffer Against Financial Strain: A Dyadic Investigation of Relationship Satisfaction in Couples” at the International Association for Relationship Research in Glasgow, Scotland last week!
Dr. Williamson was recently interviewed on The Last Show with David Cooper about our paper on romantic relationships, socioeconomic status, and health, published last month in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. The interview covers the core findings, including why relationship quality and SES each matter independently for health, and what the differences we found between the US and Spain suggest about how structural contexts shape health disparities.
Dr. Williamson has an op-ed out this week in the Houston Chronicle, drawing on the lab’s recently published research on how the lack of diversity in psychology’s research samples affects undergraduate students.
The piece argues that legislation restricting DEI discussions in university classrooms threatens to undermine exactly the kinds of conversations that our data show matter most to students, and to the pipeline of future scientists.
Here is the full text of the op-ed.
Our recent paper on relationships, socioeconomic status, and health (published in JSPR) was covered by PsyPost. The article walks through the U.S.-Spain comparison and includes a few quotes from Dr. Williamson on the findings.
The Williamson Lab has a new paper published in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, alongside collaborators Inmaculada Valor-Segura and María Alonso-Ferres at the University of Granada. Using demographically stratified national samples from the U.S. (n = 1,004) and Spain (n = 969), we examined whether relationship quality predicts life satisfaction, physical health, and mental health above and beyond socioeconomic status. In both countries, relationship satisfaction and perceived partner responsiveness were robustly associated with all three outcomes, even after accounting for income, education, and subjective social status. Objective SES showed a different pattern across contexts: education predicted outcomes consistently in the U.S. but not in Spain, potentially reflecting the two countries’ different healthcare systems. Together, the findings suggest that close relationships are an independent pathway to health which holds up regardless of socioeconomic circumstances or national context.
Building on our ongoing metascience work documenting the lack of diversity in psychological research samples, this qualitative study turns to a question that has received less attention: how does this gap affect the undergraduate students who are learning this science in the classroom? Using focus groups with undergraduate psychology students, we examine students’ awareness of the lack of diversity in research samples, how it affects them, and what they would like professors to do about it. Students from minoritized backgrounds in particular described impacts on their sense of belonging, motivation, and career aspirations, with many expressing feelings of frustration and discouragement. At the same time, for some students the gap served as motivation to pursue more inclusive research themselves. Notably, many minoritized students described having come to expect exclusion as the norm, a finding that speaks to just how pervasive the problem is. Students also emphasized the influential role of instructors, calling for greater transparency about sample limitations and more intentional efforts to incorporate diverse research into their teaching. This article, published in Teaching of Psychology, was co-authored by trainees, including Jennifer Figueroa and Valeria Lugo-Martinez (undergraduate students), Daniela Esquivel Cantu (lab manager), Jayda Branch (graduate student), and Clare Thomas (post doc).
The Williamson Lab is excited to share a new collaborative paper published in Family Process evaluating Juntos en Pareja (JEP), a culturally and linguistically adapted relationship and financial education program for Spanish-speaking Latine couples. Led by our collaborator Mariana Falconier and her lab at the University of Maryland, this study compared pre- to post-program outcomes among 284 Latine couples in JEP and 266 non-Latine couples in its English-language counterpart, TOGETHER. Results showed that JEP participation was associated with significant improvements in psychological distress, negative conflict management, psychological aggression, time spent with partner, and relationship quality – and uniquely, JEP couples also reported reduced difficulty paying bills, a change not seen in the TOGETHER group. This work demonstrates the value of socio-culturally responsive programming for reaching and benefiting Latine couples who have been historically underrepresented in relationship education research.
The Williamson Lab is very proud to have not one, but two articles published in the latest issue of Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. These papers examine when and how couple-focused interventions benefit families, particularly those facing higher levels of stress and economic disadvantage.
In the first paper, which is drawn from Nick Chen’s dissertation research, we use a machine learning approach to examine heterogeneity in treatment effects of couple relationship education (CRE) programs. Drawing on data from two large randomized controlled trials, the study shows that CRE effects are far from uniform: couples experiencing higher psychological distress, greater stress exposure, and lower baseline relationship happiness tend to benefit the most, especially in terms of improvements in relationship happiness and reductions in negative emotions and behaviors. These patterns replicated in an independent sample, highlighting the promise of data-driven approaches for improving how relationship interventions are targeted and evaluated.
The second paper, which was led by our collaborator Justin Lavner at the University of Georgia, focuses on whether improvements in couple functioning translate into benefits for children in low-income families. Using longitudinal data from more than 6,000 couples, the study tests indirect effects of a couple-focused intervention on multiple child outcomes 30 months later. Results indicate significant indirect effects on children’s self-regulation, behavioral problems, cognitive and academic performance, and social competence, with some variation by child age. These findings provide a rigorous test of a core assumption underlying couple-focused prevention efforts: that strengthening couple relationships can promote children’s well-being over time.
