The Relationship Between Self-disclosure And Relationship Commitment In Romantic Relationships In Social Networks:the Moderating Role Of Attachment

With the advent of the network era,network communication has become an important part of individual daily life.Social networking sites provide individuals with a new communication platform,but also change the development of traditional romantic relationships,and play an important role in the maintenance of romantic relationships.Commitment is a kind of subjective experience of relationship dependence,which is formed in the relationship and influenced by both partners.Commitment plays a central role in shaping the quality and stability of relationships,so it is important to understand the factors that influence commitment.Previous studies have explored the influence of social network platforms on romantic relationships from the perspective of communication.In this study,from the perspective of deeper self-representation changes,we chose self-disclosure of romantic relationships in social networks as a novel and interesting way to reflect the changes in couples’ self-representation,and explored its influence on commitment and the moderating role of attachment.Romantic relationship self-disclosure in social networks is the self-disclosure of romantic relationship on the Internet,which can be regarded as an indicator of the degree of integration between an individual’s self-representation and his partner.There is no uniform and accurate measurement method in previous studies.The most sophisticated measurements are based on Facebook.However,due to the large functional differences between Facebook and We Chat,the measurement method is not applicable to We Chat.However,most of the existing measurement methods based on We Chat are subjective and cannot be repeated,which is not conducive to further discussion on the development and maintenance of romantic relationships on the social network platform in the future.Therefore,we believe that it is very necessary to construct a self-disclosure evaluation model of romantic relationships in social networks based on We Chat.The relationship between self-disclosure and commitment in romantic relationships in social networks is limited and controversial.First of all,existing studies on self-disclosure and commitment in romantic relationships on social networks are all based on the social platform Facebook,which is different from We Chat in function as well as individual meanings.Therefore,the relationship between self-disclosure and commitment in romantic relationships in social networks based on We Chat needs to be further verified.Second,there are still many conflicting conclusions in related studies.The reason for these contradictory results may be that the influence of individual differences is ignored.Since attachment theory has a powerful ability to explain individual differences in interpersonal behavior,and the internal working model of attachment may affect the degree of changes in individuals’ self-representation in romantic relationships,this study introduced attachment as a moderating variable to further explore the relationship between self-disclosure and commitment in romantic relationships in social networks.Existing supporting evidence suggests that attachment style influences individuals’ disclosure of romantic relationships on social networks.In this study,from the perspective of changes in self-representation,the selfextension theory and attachment theory are combined to look at changes in commitment from the perspective of social network behavior.Starting with this more intrinsic self-representation can help us understand more deeply the commitment between partners.Third,commitment is influenced by the behavioral interactions of both partners.Most previous studies only took individuals as research objects and ignored the influence of the other party on relationship commitment.Therefore,it is also necessary to collect data from both couples to explore the impact of self-disclosure of romantic relationships on commitment in social networks from a dual perspective.Based on the moderating model of subject-object interdependence and from the perspective of changes in self-representation of romantic relationships,this study used one preliminary study and two studies to explore the relationship between self-disclosure and commitment in romantic relationships in social networks,as well as the moderating effect of attachment dimensions between individuals and their partners.In the preliminary study,the content analysis method was adopted to encode the objective indicators of We Chat data and construct an objective evaluation model for measuring romantic relationship disclosure.The relevant data of 426 We Chat users were collected,and 15 indicators were coded and calculated through factor analysis to obtain an evaluation index model of romantic relationship self-disclosure in social networks,which was used as a measurement tool for follow-up experiments.In the first study,the commitment questionnaire and adult attachment questionnaire were used to measure the relevant variables of160 couples,and the collected data were processed by correlation analysis,subject-object interdependence regulation model and other methods,so as to explore the influence of the selfdisclosure level of romantic relationship in social networks on commitment and the moderating role of attachment.The results showed that self-disclosure of romantic relationships on individual social networks could positively predict individual relationship commitment,but there was no significant correlation between self-disclosure of romantic relationships on partner’s social networks and individual commitment,and the attachment dimension of both individual and partner played a moderating role.In the second study,the level of self-disclosure of romantic relationships in social networks was manipulated by the imagination task to further explore the influence of disclosure changes on commitment and verify the moderating role of attachment dimension.The study was divided into two groups of romantic relationship disclosure and daily content disclosure,and completed two tasks of imaginary self-disclosure and imaginary partner disclosure.The tasks were randomly assigned and conducted three days apart.It was found that increased self-disclosure and partner disclosure can promote commitment,and both individual and partner attachment dimensions play a moderating role.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)Self-disclosure of romantic relationships on social networks can be divided into two dimensions: long-term disclosure and short-term disclosure.Based on the above indicators,the evaluation model constructed in this study can effectively measure We Chat users’ self-disclosure of romantic relationships.(2)Self-disclosure of romantic relationships on individual social networks can positively predict commitment;There was no significant correlation between partner social network romantic relationship self-disclosure and individual commitment.(3)In the positive prediction of romantic relationships on individual social networks,individual attachment anxiety can significantly enhance the predictive effect,while partner attachment anxiety and partner attachment avoidance can significantly weaken the predictive effect(4)In the prediction of romantic relationship self-disclosure in partners’ social networks on individual commitment,partner attachment anxiety significantly enhanced the predictive effect.(5)Increased self-disclosure and partner disclosure in romantic relationships on social networks can promote commitment.(6)In terms of the promoting effect of self-disclosure on commitment,individual attachment anxiety can significantly enhance the promoting effect,while partner attachment avoidance can significantly weaken the predictive effect.(7)Among the stimulative effects of partner’s disclosure of increased relationship commitment,partner attachment anxiety can significantly enhance the stimulative effect.From the perspective of changes in self-representation of romantic relationships,this study constructively combined self-extension theory and attachment theory to explore the influence of self-disclosure of romantic relationships in social networks between partners on commitment and the moderating role of attachment dimension in this influence,providing a deeper understanding of the dynamic development of romantic relationships from the perspective of social network behavior.In addition,the actor-partner interdependence moderation model is adopted to analyze the collected binary data,which not only enriches the theoretical achievements in the field of commitment,but also provides some inspiration for the field of romantic relationship in terms of research methods and analytical means.This study also innovatively constructed an objective evaluation model of romantic relationship self-disclosure in social networks,providing a new idea for the measurement of romantic relationship self-disclosure in social networks,and providing support for the repeatability and objectivity of future related studies.