Research

Dr. Pietromonaco's research examines interpersonal dynamics in close relationships. Close relationships, including marital relationships, have been consistently linked to health and well-being over the life course, but much needs to be known about precisely how relationships promote or hinder health. A primary goal of her work is to understand the processes through which interactions in marital relationships shape each partner's emotional and physical health. She examines multiple processes that may contribute to downstream health outcomes, including physiological and behavioral responses as well as subjective perceptions. Her work typically examines these responses as they arise during couples’ interactions when they are trying to resolve important areas of conflict or disagreement.  She also investigates how individual differences (e.g., in attachment security/insecurity, childhood adversity, depression) modulate each partner’s responses during couple interactions, and how situational variables (e.g., differences in power or culture) influence couples’ communication patterns, behavior, and relationship quality over time.

Dr. Pietromonaco is Principal Investigator for the Growth in Early Marriage (GEM) Project, a three-wave longitudinal study of newlywed couples.  The dataset includes measures of couple members' physiological responses (e.g., cortisol, alpha amylase) over the course of discussions about areas of disagreement as well as their behavior and subjective perceptions, along with standard measures assessing relationship and emotional health. This work was funded by the National Cancer Institute, R01CA133908.  Her current research involves collaborations using the GEM data, as well as other datasets, to further understand how couples' relationships may protect or harm each partner's health and well-being.

Her research contributions include advancing knowledge about how expectations and beliefs about attachment relationships shape couple members' health-related physiological (e.g., cortisol reactivity) and behavioral responses to stress; discovering how relationship and affective processes unfold in everyday social interactions using daily diary methods; integrating social-cognitive approaches with attachment theory to understand how individuals think, feel and behave in their close relationships; demonstrating the significance of cognitive and interpersonal processes in promoting and maintaining depression, and integrating cognitive and interpersonal theories of depression with attachment theory; and, specifying conditions under which gender and gender-related contexts are connected to psychological, physiological, relational and emotional well-being.