Editable, Persistent, and Emotionally Expressive: An Affordance Approach to the Relationship Between Channel Use and Romantic Conflict Behavior

In: Journal of media psychology, Volume 36, Issue 3, p. 157-167

Abstract

Abstract: A 5-day diary study examined how channel affordances are related to channel use and outcomes in romantic conflict. Adults answered five consecutive days of surveys about daily conflict occurrence, channel affordances, channel use, and conflict behavior. The results of a 1–1–1 multilevel mediation analysis showed negative within-indirect effects for the channel affordances of editability and persistence on constructive conflict behavior via mobile text messaging, and a positive within-indirect effect for the channel affordance of bandwidth on constructive conflict behavior via face-to-face communication. The data suggest that channel affordances motivate channel use in romantic conflict and that these channel affordances are indirectly related to constructive conflict behavior.