New research published in Journal of social and personal relationships This provides evidence that confidence in how a person feels about their romantic partner plays an important role in their overall relationship satisfaction. The findings suggest that when people have strong beliefs about their positive feelings toward their significant other, they tend to experience greater relationship happiness and better mental health. This study highlights the importance of metacognition, the psychological process of thinking about your thoughts and feelings.
Social psychology has studied the concept of attitude for decades. An attitude is essentially a basic evaluation, positive or negative, of a person, place, or thing. In this field, scientists have consistently pointed out that two people may hold exactly the same attitude, but they differ in how strongly or confidently they hold that attitude. Strong attitudes tend to resist change and have a strong influence on how people think and behave.
“I’ve been studying ‘strong opinions’ for most of my career,” explains Andrew Luttrell, an associate professor of psychological science at Ball State University. He is also the host of the Opinion Science podcast. “These are opinions that resist change and influence our behavior. Usually this research focuses on political opinions or consumer preferences, but I have graduate students who are interested in relationships that can overcome difficulties, and I thought we could integrate our interests to see if psychology’s classic ideas about attitudes and opinions hold true within people’s intimate relationships.”
To explore these ideas, researchers recruited 488 adults in the United States and United Kingdom who were currently in a romantic relationship. The median length of these relationships was 14.5 years. Of this last group, approximately 64 percent identify as female, 34 percent identify as male, and the majority identify as white.
Participants completed a comprehensive online survey designed to measure their evaluation of their partner, their confidence in that evaluation, and their overall happiness. To measure partners’ attitudes, scientists used semantic differential scales. This is a common psychological tool that asks people to rate concepts using opposite adjectives, allowing participants to rate their partner on a scale from minus four to plus four.
Following this, participants answered one question asking how confident they were about their attitude toward their partner using a scale of 1 to 5. The researchers also administered several standardized questionnaires to assess relationship satisfaction and general life satisfaction. For example, relationship satisfaction surveys asked participants questions such as how well their partner met their needs.
To assess mental and emotional well-being, scientists used validated health-related quality of life surveys. The survey asks participants to rate their symptoms of depression, anxiety, fatigue, and sleep disturbances over the past seven days. By combining these tools, we were able to obtain a comprehensive understanding of each participant’s psychological state.
Four months after the first study, the scientists contacted the participants again. A total of 319 participants completed the second phase of the study. This follow-up study allowed the researchers to assess whether participants’ initial attitudes toward their partners changed over time.
The data revealed that participants who had more positive attitudes toward their partners naturally reported higher relationship satisfaction. The scientists also noticed an independent effect: higher attitudinal certainty was associated with higher relationship satisfaction. Most notably, the researchers found a significant interaction between partner attitudes and attitude certainty.
This interaction suggests that the association between liking one’s partner and feeling satisfied in the relationship is greater for people who report high levels of confidence in their attitudes. Among those low in certainty, partner attitudes still predicted relationship satisfaction, but the effect was significantly smaller. This provides evidence that attitudinal certainty plays an important role in promoting relationship well-being.
“People differ not only in how much they like their partners, but also in how certain they are of their opinions,” Luttrell points out. “And that degree of certainty reveals how stable those feelings are over the future and how those feelings guide other judgments about relationships that are associated with indicators of mental health.”
Scientists also found that relationship length influenced these relationships. Analyzing the data based on couples’ relationship length, they found that the interaction between partner attitudes and beliefs was strongest for those who had been together for 12 years or more.
“We were surprised to find that certainty was more important for people who had been in a relationship for longer,” Luttrell said. “For people in new relationships, the story is simple: If you like your partner, you’re happy with the relationship. But we found that in relationships that have lasted at least 12 years, there are differences between people who are more or less sure about their feelings for their partner.”
Although the researchers expected attitudinal certainty to have a direct impact on mental health, the data provided evidence of a more indirect pathway. Higher attitudinal certainty predicted higher relationship satisfaction, which in turn led to better overall subjective well-being. Through this indirect route, greater certainty led to fewer depressive symptoms, less anxiety, and better sleep quality.
In psychology terminology, this is known as an indirect effect. Feeling confident about your emotions doesn’t automatically make your anxiety and depression go away. Rather, that confidence tends to build a stronger sense of satisfaction with relationships, which acts as a buffer to protect their mental health.
The longitudinal part of the study provided further insight into how emotions evolve. The researchers found that participants who were more certain about their partner’s attitude during the initial study had less attitude change four months later. Participants who initially expressed anxiety were more likely to report changes in affect during follow-up.
When interpreting the findings, Luttrell provided some background to avoid misunderstandings. “Overall, we found a clear pattern: people like their partners, their likes don’t change much over the months, and when they like their partners, they feel satisfied with the relationship,” he explained. “That’s true even for people who say they’re relatively unsure about their feelings. But for people who are sure they love their partner, those feelings are even more durable and impactful.”
As with all research, this study has some limitations. Because this sample relies on individuals self-selecting to participate in the online survey panel, it may not accurately represent the demographic diversity of couples in the broader population. Scientists note that cultural differences influence how people openly report negative judgments about their relationships, which may limit the ability to detect the true effects of attitudinal certainty.
Additionally, a 4-month follow-up period is relatively short when studying relationships that have lasted decades. Future research would benefit from assessing attitudes multiple times over much longer periods of time to better establish how emotions stabilize or fluctuate. Tracking these movements over years may reveal whether reduced certainty acts as an early warning sign of eventual relationship dissolution.
Scientists also cautioned that the study cannot establish a strict cause-and-effect relationship. Having a highly satisfying relationship may increase confidence in one’s attitude toward one’s partner, rather than confidence leading to satisfaction. Future research could explore this by manipulating momentary feelings of certainty and observing direct psychological effects.
Finally, the researchers assessed attitude certainty based on a single-item measure. Although this is standard practice in psychological research, future research may use more complex measures to ensure that it accurately captures the concept. Additional research should also be conducted to distinguish between attitudinal certainty and relationship commitment, because theoretically, people may feel uncertain about their partner and still be committed to a relationship.
The study, “Partner Attitudinal Certainty and its Impact on Relationship Satisfaction, Mental Health, and Long-Term Stability,” was authored by Rashida Adisa and Andrew Luttrell.
