The Relationships between Reassurance Seeking and Inference of Significant Others' Behavior and Affect: Examinations Using Third Person Rating, KJ Method, and Text Mining

Abstract

We examined individuals' free descriptions of their significant others' intentions and affect. Participants were 159 (Analysis 1) and 200 undergraduate students (Analysis 2; data were added to those of Analysis 1), who were asked to read about events involving their significant others and then write about these others' intentions and affect. When the events were positive, we observed no differences in the free description content according to participants' level of reassurance seeking. However, for negative events, we did observe some differences: that is, people with high reassurance seeking tended to infer their significant others to have more univalent affect.