Richard Gonzalez
How do romantic partners influence each other’s well-being? Why do some parent-infant pairings lead to secure attachment? Why do some therapist-client pairs achieve breakthrough results while others struggle? What makes some collaborations spark innovation? These questions share a fundamental challenge: the people involved are interdependent so their outcomes are inherently intertwined. Relationship science seeks to explain how people shape one another’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior over time.
For decades, this interdependence was viewed as a statistical headache, violating the independence assumptions of standard analyses. In this talk, I’ll demonstrate that interdependence isn’t a nuissance but the very phenomenon that should be addressed.
Using the intraclass correlation as our starting point, I’ll review practical approaches for quantifying and interpreting interdependence in dyadic data. We’ll explore how different dyadic models reveal distinct relationship dynamics, connecting statistical insights to foundational theories like Kelley and Thibaut’s interdependence framework. Through examples, you’ll see how these methods illuminate patterns that traditional analyses might miss.
With Brenda Volling.