The Study Of The Relationship Between Self-expansion And Temporal Relation-appraisal

Temporal self-appraisal theory mentions that individuals tend to disparage the past self and compliment the present self, in order to maintain and enhance the present self-esteem. The theory also assumes that the result of temporal relation-appraisal is consistent with temporal self-appraisal. Self-expansion model mentions that the degree of self-expansion that the partner provides is related to relationship satisfaction, and it is able to predict the future relationship satisfaction. In addition, the model also refers to that self-expansion is a kind of basic motivation. Other self-related motivations, such as self-validation, self-enhancement and self-evaluation can be attributed to self-expansion. Therefore, the study of the relationship of self-expansion and temporal relation-appraisal will enrich the temporal self-appraisal theory, and lay the foundation for self-expansion applied in temporal comparisons, and provide some empirical data for verifying the hypothesis that self-expansion is a kind of basic motive.In this study, the subjects are college students. The author uses the relationship assessment scale to measure the relationship satisfaction in different time cues, uses the self-expansion questionnaire to measure the degree of self-expansion, uses the how I see myself questionnaire to measure the self-enhancement, and uses the perceived relationship quality scale to measure the relation-enhancement. In Study 1, it totally recovered 377 valid questionnaires. The purpose is to survey the overall trend of the individual evaluation of past, present and future relationship satisfaction. Study 2 is a pretest-posttest design. The interval of the both surveys is one month. It totally recovered 136 valid questionnaires. The purpose of this study is to certificate that individuals tend to disparage the past relationship satisfaction to experience a kind of progressive sense. And there is not real progress. At the same time, this study would research the effect of self-enhancement, relation-enhancement and self-expansion to temporal relation-appraisal, and the relation of relation-enhancement and self-expansion.Under the conditions of this study, this study got the following main conclusions:(1) The relation-appraisal of present is higher than the past, at the same time higher than the future.(2) When individuals evaluate temporal relationship satisfaction, they tend to disparage the past, and overestimate the future.(3) Relationship satisfaction will reduce over time. And the reduced degree of self-expansion is positively correlated to the reduced degree of relationship satisfaction.(4) The degree of self-expansion can be a good predictor of the disparaging degree when individuals evaluate the past relationship satisfaction.(5) Self-enhancement has not significant effect in the change degree of relationship-appraisal in different time cues.(6) The degree of relation-enhancement can be a good predictor of the disparaging degree when individuals evaluate the past relationship satisfaction.(7) Self-expansion is a mediator in the effect of relation-enhancement to the degree of disparaging the relationship satisfaction.In the future we can use the time line, or distinguish "recent past", "distant past", "near future", "distant future", in order to study the trend of temporal relation-appraisal. We can prime the motivation of self-enhancement, relation-enhancement or self-expansion in an experiment to accurately examine their effects of temporal relation-appraisal. We also can use multi-level, multi-age subjects to survey, and improve the external validity of the results.