ABSTRACT
People’s beliefs about their significant others are assumed to influence the course of their relationships in important ways (for reviews, see Baldwin, 1992; Bradbury & Fincham, 1990; Hazan & Shaver, 1994; Reis & Patrick, 1996). One class of beliefs-expectations concerning acceptance and rejection-has long been deemed especially vital to people’s relationship functioning (e.g., Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980; Erikson, 1950; Horney, 1937; Sullivan, 1953). Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980), for example, theorized that people’s internal working models of relationships, incorporating expectations of rejection and acceptance, shape their relationships. In an example of what Merton (1948) termed the self-fulfilling prophecy, Sroufe (1990) suggested that rejection expectations can lead people to behave in ways that elicit rejection from others. In this article, we examine whether and how this proposed self-fulfilling prophecy operates in the romantic relationships of people high in rejection sensitivity (RS).
