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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.

This 5-day daily diary study examined the influence of media use on the spillover and crossover effect of couple conflict among married and dating couples. Couples aged 18–38 years recorded their daily overload, negative mood, couple conflict, media use, flooding, and satisfaction. The results showed negative spillover and crossover effects: individuals reported more negative moods and couple conflict in response to their own and their partners' increase in daily overload. Following media synchronicity theory, the more synchronous media couples used in conflict, the more they resolved the conflict. In addition, the more couples segmented their channels, the less they flooded and the more they resolved the conflict. The results suggest that dating and married couples might benefit from managing conflict associated with spillover and crossover effects using synchronous channels that are segmented.

An experiment investigated the effect of relational satisfaction and media synchronicity on dating and married couples' attributions for their partners' positive and negative conflict behaviors. Couples completed measures of relational satisfaction, and then engaged in an online conflict discussion using synchronous or asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC). After the discussion, posttest questionnaires assessed their attributions for their partners' conflict behavior. Individuals with greater relational satisfaction tended to ascribe their partners' positive conflict behavior to internal attributions. Additional findings revealed that satisfied individuals made more internal attributions for their partners' behavior in asynchronous CMC, rather than synchronous CMC, and satisfied individuals made more internal attributions for their partners' positive conflict behaviors in asynchronous CMC. Relational satisfaction affects attributions in online conflict, and, contrary to prediction, satisfied individuals appear to benefit more in conflict when using asynchronous CMC.

Previous research found that computer-mediated communication (CMC) users affectively compensate for partners when they believe their partners' negative demeanor to be malleable, but unlike in other media, they discount their own influence on their partner. This research examined attributions that chat users make when they influence their partners but do not recognize their own causal influence. Dyads conducted either online text-based conversations or audio interactions. Each male dyad member was told that his female partner (who was actually naïve) was in a bad mood or had an unpleasant personality. Although they had rated their ability to influence others' demeanors as lesser when using CMC compared with those who anticipated telephone (audio), males acted more pleasantly when expecting a bad mood, and rated the partner as behaving more pleasantly, in CMC. In CMC, males filled the attributional gap by inferring that partners' behavior reflected partners' liking toward them. These findings extend the hyperpersonal model of CMC to explain how illusions about partners' affection may come to influence the sociability of online interaction and vice versa.