Hypotheses
Creators: name: Tawa, John
name: Gundrum, Emma
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2023

description: While it’s known that close interpersonal relationships, including romantic relationships, increase resiliency, evidence also suggests that people with lower resilience may be less successful finding and maintaining relationships (Mizock et. al, 2019), suggesting a bidirectional relationship. During and following the Covid-19 pandemic, people began to increasingly struggle with resilience, particularly after multiple deconfinements and reconfinements (Duray-Parmentier, 2023). This struggle with resilience may have been amplified by the stress relationships were put under as people isolated themselves and interacted with fewer people in person. In turn, relationship issues were amplified by the tests of resilience during this time. 
Although resilience is affected by outside factors, such as relationships, there have also been studies that have identified a “resilient personality type” (Wright et. al, 2023). This study specifically looked at people with chronic health conditions to examine their resilience, positive affect, distress over an eight year period, and family relationships. They found that the resilient personality type correlated with lower levels of distress and higher perceived self control. They also found that, long term, stronger family relationships correlated with less distress and greater positive affect and perceived control, supporting the idea that strong relationships may boost resiliency. These findings also suggest a positive relationship between positive affect, resilience, and relationships. 
While personality has been shown to correlate with resilience, it also affects how people behave in relationships, and therefore the success of romantic relationships. People use many different tactics to find and maintain relationships. Some tactics are more conducive to healthy relationships than others. For example, displays of love and care are seen more in committed relationships than jealousy induction. Although the tactics change throughout the course of a relationship, there’s also a correlation between different personality traits and the frequency with which someone will use different tactics (de Miguel and Buss, 2011). Another theory on personality and relationship success suggests that it’s not an individual’s specific personality traits that impact the success of their relationship. Instead, it emphasizes the importance of both partners’ behavior and personalities complementing each other (Markey &amp; Markey, 2007). 
Research has shown relationships between personality and resilience, personality and relationship status, and resilience and relationship status, but there hasn’t been much research exploring these topics together. Using data from the Post-Pandemic Wellness Survey, I’ll be examining the relationship between these three variables. 
I hypothesize that there will be a negative correlation between negative affect and resilience. I expect that negative affect will be lower in people who are married than those who are single or in less committed relationships. I also hypothesize that resilience scores will be higher in people in relationships than in single people. Finally, I predict that higher negative affect scores are associated with lower brief resilience scores. I also predict that this effect will be more strongly negative for people who aren’t in a relationship.