The Power of Potential: Relational Self-Expansion Potential and Daily Self-Expansion Behaviors Uniquely Contribute to Relationship Quality Over Time

Self-expansion experiences include perceptions of potential (i.e., beliefs about how self-expanding a relationship could be in the future) and behaviors (i.e., engaging in actual self-expanding activities). In two preregistered dyadic daily experience studies, we examined whether self-expansion potential is an antecedent to behavioral self-expansion, and how potential and behavioral self-expansion uniquely and synergistically predict relationship satisfaction and commitment daily and over time. Results revealed that self-expansion potential prospectively predicted behavioral self-expansion in both studies. Moreover, both self-expansion potential and behaviors separately predicted greater relationship satisfaction and commitment daily (Studies 1-2) and two months later (Study 2), with potential being a stronger predictor than behaviors. The evidence for self-expansion potential protecting satisfaction and commitment when couples did not engage in daily self-expanding activities, however, was somewhat inconclusive. Implications regarding the power of potential to impact relationships are discussed, including the need for future research to consider this important facet of self-expansion.