EXAMINING EMOTIONAL GRANULARITY AND EMPATHY WITHIN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

Abstract

In this thesis, the relationship between emotional granularity, empathy, and relationship satisfaction was examined. Emotional granularity is defined as the ability to make subtle distinctions between emotional states. While a more novel concept, a growing body of literature links lower granularity to a variety of psychopathologies and generally lower psychological well-being. In contrast, higher granularity has been found to be associated with better psychological outcomes, yet less research has been done in the context of relationships and even less with its relation to empathy. Initially, a mediation relationship was considered with empathy being the mediator between emotional granularity and relationship satisfaction. Subsequently, an interaction between emotional and granularity was modeled as the mediation did not show significant results. The interaction models yielded significant results with emotional granularity being a significant predictor of lower relationship satisfaction given lower empathy, however higher empathy counteracted this effect. Additionally, emotional granularity is quantified in this study utilizing text analysis methodology, which deviates from prior literature, but provides insightful looks into different approaches for measuring the construct.