Implicit Interpersonal Evaluations as a Risk Factor for Suicidality: Automatic Spousal Attitudes Predict Changes in the Probability of Suicidal Thoughts

Abstract

Thwarted social connection is a critical risk factor for suicidality, and several theoretical perspectives highlight the importance of interpersonal affect to social connection. Given that marriage is an increasingly important source of social connection, we examined the role of automatic spousal attitudes- conceptualized as spontaneously activated affective associations involving one's spouse-in predicting suicidal thoughts in 3 longitudinal studies of married couples. Studies 1a (N = 204) and 1b (N = 159) demonstrated that more positive automatic spousal attitudes, assessed implicitly shortly after the marriage as the speed with which people categorized positive relative to negative words following photo-primes of their spouse, were associated with a weakened probability of the self-reported suicidal thoughts 1 year later. Study 2 (N = 229) provided further evidence that automatic spousal attitudes predict suicidal thoughts by showing that newly conditioned automatic spousal attitudes predicted suicidal thoughts. In that study, more positive automatic spousal attitudes exhibited after an evaluative conditioning procedure were associated with a reduced probability of suicidal thoughts 2 months later. Across studies, an increase (1 SD) in automatic spousal attitudes was associated with approximately a 50% decreased probability of suicidal thought. In all 3 studies, implicitly measured spousal attitudes captured variance in suicidal thoughts not captured by implicitly measured attitudes toward oneself and self-reported marital satisfaction, both of which proved to be less reliable predictors of suicidal thoughts. These findings highlight the importance of automatic interpersonal processes to well-being generally and suicidality specifically, and may thereby suggest novel methods for reducing risk of suicidality.