University Honors

Emotion work and relationship maintenance behaviors are known to improve relationshipquality. Previous studies have revealed gender differences in both emotion work and relationshipmaintenance behaviors. This quantitative study aims to explore the gender gap seen in emotionwork through measuring relationship maintenance behavior and additionally explore if the roleof attachment moderates gender differences. It was hypothesized that relationship maintenancestrategies will be gendered, additionally insecure attachment will be gendered, and there will bean interaction between gender and attachment in predicting relationship maintenance scores.Results indicate women predict higher relationship maintenance scores. Insecure attachment wasnot found to be gendered, however there was a small interaction between attachment and genderindicating women high in anxious attachment score higher in relationship maintenance comparedto men high in anxious attachment. Research efforts have focused on understanding predictors ofrelationship quality relationships because fostering healthy relationships are known to improvelife outcomes.