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Adult Development
Adult Development
Cognitive Aspects of Thriving
Close Relationships

JAN D. SINNOTT

1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sinnott, Jan D.
Adult development : cognitive aspects of thriving close relationships / Jan D. Sinnott.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–989281–5 (hardback)
1. Interpersonal relations. 2. Adulthood—Psychological aspects. I. Title.
HM1106.S563 2014
302—dc23   2014012121

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
 Contents

Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii

ONE Introduction: Complex Thought and Adult

Intimate Relationships 1
TWO The Development of Complex Thought
in Adulthood: Some Theories and
Mechanisms that Grow with Interpersonal
Experience 11
THREE The Big Picture: “New Science” Operations
and Logics as a Way of Understanding
Postformal Thought Operations and
Intimate Relationship Processes 23
FOUR Complex Thought and Emotionally
Experienced Close Relationships 51
FIVE Social, Cultural, and Historical Factors
Relate to Cognitive Aspects of Intimate
Relationships 67
vi | Contents

SIX Cognition and Fundamental Complex

Relationship Skills: Theory-Limited
Nonclinical Literature Related to Cognitive
Factors in Intimate Relationships 79
SEVEN Cognition and Fundamental Complex
Relationship Skills: Some Preliminary
Quantitative and Qualitative Research 97
EIGHT Cognitive Aspects of Close Relationships
that Thrive: Practices for Dyads in Intimate
Relationships 115
NINE Future Research that Includes Culture and
History Effects 123

Appendices 133

References 159

About the Author 175

Index 177
 Preface

I’m a psychologist. People have two common reactions to that fact

when they meet me and find out my profession. One reaction is
something like fear and silence, because we all worry at least a little
that we’re pathological in some way and don’t want others to see
our weaknesses. But the other reaction always, in some way, demon-
strates a curiosity about relationships. “What can you tell me about
(name problem here) that I always have with my mother/father/part-
ner/family member/friend?” Of course I can’t say very much about
their problematic relationship since I usually don’t know the person
involved in it. But this intense interest in close relationships is evident
all around me, all around us, often in our own thoughts and feelings
as we go through the day. We yearn for close relationships. We want
to understand them, get some control over them, if for no other rea-
son than to manage the strong feelings that come with them. And we
need close relationships. After all, we are a social species.
I’m a psychologist, and psychology does have a lot to tell us about
our close relationships but in my opinion, not enough. We seem to
be short-changing a part of the Big Picture. Something seems incom-
plete to me as I read studies about relationships. In this topic I know
quite a lot about, something important seems to be missing.
viii | Preface

I have spent years thinking about thinking, and wisdom, and how
the quality of our thinking ability alters our life experience as we
develop. I have spent years looking at problem-solving abilities of
adults and at the outcomes of those abilities in behavior in all kinds
of settings. But in all of that investigation where was our under-
standing of problem-solving and thinking ability in the relationship
setting? That question, as I framed it for myself, relates to the think-
ing abilities I had been studying. Does it matter if a person is able
to think in complex ways in the setting of a close relationship? If so,
how might it matter? If it doesn’t matter, then thinking certainly
plays a disappointing and limited role in one of the most important
human experiences. No, I don’t believe that we are completely ratio-
nal animals. We now know that even economic decisions are moved
by feelings more than by reason. Maybe relationships are like that
too, based mostly on feelings and less on reason. If so, there would
not be much information on the role of thinking ability in satisfying
relationships. Yet reason would still be at least a part of the relation-
ship story.
Suddenly it hit me. As cognitive psychologists, we have been
working hard looking at reasoning and at what is termed the solution
of “well-structured” problems. These are problems that have clear
goals and clear strategies leading to a single logical solution. But close
relationships present “ill-structured problems,” those dependent on
what researchers call “fuzzy set logic.” These types of problems often
do not have clear goals or solutions or use typical straightforward,
scientific logic.
So we psychologists have not yet examined the effect of think-
ing and problem-solving ability on close relationships. We have been
busy elsewhere in the world of well-structured problems.
Of course, understanding the way intimate dyads solve problems
that occur in their relationships is critically important to those rela-
tionships continuing happily for a long period of time. Many types
of family and couple therapy are, bottom line, ways of improving the
activity of problem-solving among intimates. Ideally, in therapy we
learn to expand the problem space and see the situation from a larger
reasoning perspective. This book is partly about how, cognitively,
this might come about.
At this point you may be thinking about your close relation-
ships and immediately feeling the feelings that come with the
 Preface | ix

thought of those relationships. Much of the current work on close

relationships is about those feelings—how they are established,
maintained, or healed if something goes wrong. For example, in
the literature there is consideration of a person’s attachment his-
tory and its effect on current adult relationships. That feeling com-
ponent is certainly important, crucial even, to close relationship
quality.
But we now know that there are additional things that are impor-
tant to relationship quality. Credit that new awareness to the emerg-
ing global village we all now experience to some degree. When
you wander from village to village you notice that other people do
things differently. It took a long time, but eventually we psycholo-
gists noticed that cultural, historical, and social forces influence
relationship quality. Psychology has always been guilty of a certain
amount of navel gazing, looking at the person alone as the source
of behavior. Psychology came of age in Western culture during the
Enlightenment period of history, so the focus on the isolated indi-
vidual became strong. That historical fact in itself is an example of
the reality that culture, social expectations, and historical influences
are constantly surrounding us like the air we breathe. We did not
notice them all around us at first, or consider their effects on us,
on our psychology. Cultures and historical periods set up rules and
expectations for the conduct of behavior, including behavior related
to close relationships. Once we noticed that “air” around us we could
begin to study the big picture, the larger stage on which our close
relationships play out during our lifetimes. The study of close rela-
tionships could be about more than feelings and emotion. We now
are becoming aware that this is the first historical period when feel-
ings and emotion can be combined with cognition when considering
important elements in close relationships.
Once we, as psychologists, opened our consideration of elements
in close relationships to consideration of cultural and historical forces,
we set up a situation demanding that we ask more questions about
complex causes of behavior related to relationships. Personally, I was
motivated to ask the question I am now asking in this book. Looking
at one more potentially important factor, I started asking, “What is
the importance of the quality of thinking and of problem-solving
ability for experience and behavior and satisfaction in close relation-
ships?” And I began to see that complex thinking and problem-solving
x | Preface

abilities were crucial to behavior and satisfaction in relationships, as

well as in other aspects of life.
I began to apply my own theory of complex postformal thought
to address the causes of satisfaction or dissatisfaction in close rela-
tionships. My theory was built to go beyond Piaget’s theory, since
mature adult thinkers and problem-solvers don’t seem to stay within
Piaget’s scientific formal logic but go beyond it. What do they do?
How do they think if they are wise? There seemed to be “new” log-
ics out there used by wise individuals, by physicists, by mystics, by
chaos theory, by theories of self-regulating systems. How did think-
ing and problem-solving look in these systems, with these think-
ers? A self-referential reasoning was used, one that admitted the
fact that our truths are partially constructed by us. This cognition
seemed to be used in lots of domains of life, so why not within the
ever-changing adventure of intimate relationships?
This book starts with an introduction to the complex topic of
complex thinking and problem-solving as it relates to intimate
relationships (Chapter 1). When I use the term “intimate rela-
tionships” I mean couple and spousal relationships and close,
emotionally intimate relationships between adult siblings and
between adult “good friends.” The dynamics of satisfying close
relationships may or may not have a sexual component. Similar
problem-solving abilities would be needed for long-term satisfac-
tion in any of these intimate relationships. Examples and research
in this book may focus on any type of intimate relationships. Most
of the literature in this field tends to focus on intimate spouses and
partners.
Chapter 2 is a discussion of the nature and development of com-
plex postformal thought, looking at some mechanisms in play in that
thought process. These processes are related to close relationships.
Chapter 3 examines the specific cognitive operations that consti-
tute postformal thought. In this chapter we also begin a very impor-
tant discussion of the advanced scientific thought that underlies my
theory of postformal complex thought. What kind of reasoning is
used by thinkers in, for example, quantum physics? What complex
reasoning is part of theories of self-constructing, self-regulating liv-
ing systems? It turns out that complex postformal thought comes
into play in the thinking of the new sciences, demonstrating how
such thought is a valuable thinking tool.
 Preface | xi

Chapter 4 addresses emotionally experienced connections and

close relationships and their relation to complex thought. When
emotion and connections with others are added to the mix how do
we maintain our ongoing “self”? Can we maintain the self and still
have strong felt connections with our intimates? Or must we lose the
self to find intimacy?
Chapter 5 highlights some very important and sometimes very
recent social, cultural, and historical factors, all of which interface
with cognitive aspects of intimate relationships. Understanding
relationships is difficult under the best of circumstances, so it is not
surprising that we turn away from an even bigger picture, that of
the social forces within which those human interactions are nested.
When we psychologists study the cognitive aspects of these relation-
ships, we may be especially tempted to focus on the individual who
does that thinking, rather than on variables surrounding that indi-
vidual thinker. Chapter 5 calls attention to just a few of the recent
analyses that might prove useful in our thinking about these broader
variables and relationships.
When we reach Chapter 6 we are ready to use our new, sophisti-
cated lens to examine the available research literature on cognition
and close relationships. Some of these studies led to the variables
included in my own empirical research on relationships, research
described later in this book. Analyses of some implications for rela-
tionship satisfaction of having (or not having) access to postformal
thought are summarized in Chapter 6. There are implications for
happiness vs. unhappiness in intimate relationships. What happens
when one partner has access to postformal thought and the other one
does not? How does the cognitive ability of a partner relate to healing
in a distressed relationship?
Some preliminary qualitative and quantitative research on cog-
nition and intimate relationships is described in Chapter 7. We have
found that complex thought is related to relationship satisfaction
and to processes that couples and other intimate dyads use within
their relationships. In this chapter we meet some couples and inti-
mate dyads living in long-term relationships, dyads who agreed to
respond to structured interview questions about their relationship
processes and satisfaction. We can see from their responses that
some of the complex thought elements discussed more abstractly
in earlier chapters of the book have real-life expressions in the
xii | Preface

interactions of real dyads. These responses support earlier research

in which happy and less happy dyads were videotaped solving
problems together.
Chapter 8 gives a summary of cognitive factors in relationships
that thrive, factors that go beyond the routine and “just hanging
on” levels of interactions. Knowledge of these factors enables us to
suggest exercises for individuals or couples who want to grow their
interaction skills using postformal complex-thought skills. Increased
complexity in thinking about their relationships leads to more adap-
tive behavior and greater satisfaction for those couples.
Finally, in Chapter 9, we will consider some potential quantitative
and qualitative research that is needed if we are to learn more about
complex thinking and problem-solving and dyad satisfaction in inti-
mate relationships. Some areas that need further exploration include
understanding the ways that complex thought in intimate relation-
ships can be developed. This means creating applications that can be
used by dyads to improve their interactions and happiness together
and as individuals. What these sorts of applications and tools can give
dyads is a new way of seeing their world.
The complex series of factors involved in cognitive aspects
of intimate relationships that are satisfying are summarized in
Figure 2, in Chapter 5. The caption to Figure 2 gives you a clue to
the whole process of creating and understanding cognitive aspects
of intimate relationships that are satisfying: “The Circular Evolving
Relationship: Cognitive Constructions of Intimate Relationships
and Cognitive Constructions of Cultural, Social, and Historical
Relationships Co-Construct Each Other Over Time.” Figure 2 pres-
ents the “Big Picture.”
I invite you on this adventure of thinking about a new “big pic-
ture” area of exploration: cognitive aspects of intimate relationships
that thrive.
 Acknowledgments

It is impossible to adequately thank all those who influenced or had a

role in these ideas and this book. The conversations and consultations
with individuals over my entire life and career have led to what I can
offer today in this volume.
I want to thank my whole extended family for the love and expe-
riences they have shared with me, helping me to create theory and
research about intimate relationships. I hope the ideas presented here
enrich the lives of all my grandchildren as they create intimate rela-
tionships in the future. Thanks go to Towson University for its sup-
port of my work. Thanks are also due to my friends and colleagues
who shared thoughts and emotions with me over the years, helping
me grow in so many ways. Special thanks go to my colleague Kate
Price, who supported the dream of creating this book and offered
so many suggestions for activities for intimates, suggestions offered
in a chapter here. Special thanks also to Carol Hoare, who led me
to work with Oxford University Press and the excellent staff there.
I thank all the reviewers of the book prospectus and of the final man-
uscript, reviewers willing to contribute suggestions and ideas that
made the work better. I appreciate the contributions of students from
my Complex Problem Solving Research Lab (in alphabetical order):
Travis Geissler, Shelby Hilton, Jen Merson, Ana Nardini, Rachel
xiv | Acknowledgments

Newman, Alyssa Probst, Ryan Schluter, Emily Spanos, and Corie

Tippett.
Thank you to the wonderful professional staff at Oxford University
Press! Sarah Harrington provided help and feedback regarding the
prospectus for this volume and editing of the manuscript. Andrea
Zekus was a great help with the finished manuscript, indexing, art,
and design. Thank you to Emily Perry, who worked so hard oversee-
ing production and did not get too angry with my missing deadlines.
It is certainly true that “it takes a village” to complete a piece of
work. May we always remember that we’re all in this together.

Jan Sinnott
Adult Development
 1

Introduction
Complex Thought and Adult
Intimate Relationships

T HIS BOOK DESCRIBES SOME UNDERLYING COGNITIVE PROCESSES

that interact with emotional and social factors to support sat-
isfying interactions in close relationships. Potentially, relationships
can grow stronger and richer when couples can think about their
partner and the relationship in more complex ways. This book offers
a new way of thinking about relationships, and it may be a rich start-
ing point for research and applications in many settings, for example,
in therapy.
Amazingly, there is a lack of information about the ways in which
cognition and especially problem-solving abilities might intersect
with relational processes in satisfying and less satisfying relation-
ships. Extensive reviews of literature on intimate relationships—
couple, friend, familial—have produced surprisingly few resources
and findings in this area of study. Here it is not a matter of compet-
ing theoretical stances; it is a problem of a virtual lack of theory and
research of any sort.
The information in this book explains one way in which complex
problem-solving skills can make intimate relationships richer and
2 | Adult Development

more satisfying. It develops an extension of my theory and research

program on the development, and uses, of complex postformal thought
during adulthood and aging. The book rests on 30 years of research in
adult cognitive development and on other recent empirical research
that I and others have conducted. Cases are presented to illustrate
the thinking of persons in close and satisfying relationships. Future
research and applications are suggested in the final chapter of the book.
Postformal complex thinking and reasoning seems useful for
relating in a satisfying way to those who are close to us, as we shall
see later in this book. But we don’t always have satisfying relation-
ships with those close to us. Some reasons for this unhappiness can
be found by examining emotional life, attachments, maturity, and
social situations and expectations. Other reasons for less satisfying
interactions with those closest to us may be connected with our abil-
ity to think about our relationships and our partners. In the case of
relationships, more complex types of thought may be useful to allow
us to experience satisfying, loving, long-term interactions that are
not derailed by the difficulties of life or the differences between us. It
may be useful to a relationship to be a good problem-solver.
One way to think about the complexity of thought is found in
Piaget’s theory, which conceptualizes reasoning thought as an adap-
tive, problem-solving process. In that theory, adults are considered
to be capable of scientific, reasoning (“formal thought”) views of the
world, and of each other.
Three large problems are immediately apparent, however, when
we start to think about applying theories of Piagetian scientific for-
mal reasoning thought to relationships. First, adults do not routinely
think like scientists, especially when those adults are living day to day
in their intimate relationships. Second, studies using Piaget’s origi-
nal problem-solving tasks leave us with the impression that very few
adults use scientific formal thought at all and, therefore, that adults
generally are mediocre problem-solvers when tested in this way.
So how could this thinking ability be helpful for adults developing
their intimate relationships? The third problem in applying theories
of Piagetian scientific formal reasoning thought to relationships is
that people who are trying to have satisfying relationships by being
scientific about them (Piaget’s most advanced problem-solving type
of cognition in his original work) are likely to have an even more
difficult time in relationships with that strictly cognitive approach.
 Introduction | 3

One of the new approaches I have used in my research involves

the creation and use of problems that tap a type of logical, adap-
tive problem-solving that is a step more complex than scientific
formal-level Piagetian tasks, a reasoning I call postformal thought.
This complicated reasoning seems to be what adults use in everyday
problem-solving tasks. Using these materials (originally compared
with Piagetian traditional tasks for validity), colleagues and I have
demonstrated that many more adults express much more sophisticated
reasoning in problem-solving when it is presented in everyday prob-
lem settings. In our research, the use of complex postformal thought
in those everyday settings was more frequent than we anticipated.
Use of even some of the operations of postformal thought seemed
to be beneficial to adults in solving everyday relationship problems
presented in studies. What the adults with more satisfying relational
outcomes were thinking as they conceptualized the problems, concep-
tualized their partners, and conceptualized their relationships seemed
to be rather sophisticated reasoning thought that was a level above
scientific formal logic. Of course, thought always interacted with
emotion, leading to the final outcome of relationship quality. If adults
use a different sort of logic, built on Piaget’s theory but more complex
than Piaget’s original theory, some of the problems with applying
reasoning thought to close relationships might be solved.
But thinking about this first problem, that adults don’t routinely
think like scientists, in this new way, we realized that they don’t have
to think like traditional scientists. Respondents are using a type of
thinking that goes beyond scientific thought to a different level of
complexity.
Considering the second problem, that very few adults used sci-
entific reasoning in Piagetian studies, when adults expressed their
solutions postformally, they only appeared to be “failing” at scien-
tific problem-solving, because they were doing something even more
complex than scientific problem-solving. They could describe this
complex thought, but only when they were asked to do so.
With regard to the third problem, that people have a difficult rela-
tional time when they approach relationships using mainly scientific
thinking, we need to consider the possibility that intimates in sat-
isfying relationships go beyond scientific thought to a higher-level
complexity of thought in a relationship situation, coordinating cog-
nitive and emotional approaches.
4 | Adult Development

As I developed my theory of postformal thought, based on the

sophisticated thinking and problem-solving of people working with
everyday problems like those in relationships, I began to see just how
useful this approach is to explain many facets of behavior in the real
world.
My complex postformal thought theory is complex and differ-
ent. It is also a simple but elegant idea that can be applied to many
types of behavior. My goal as a professional and as a researcher has
always been “to go where no one has gone before,” since some areas
of study are more well researched than others. My initial question
was simple: What are adults doing when they appear to be failing
Piaget’s traditional tasks, but seem to be succeeding in life? For that
matter, how can an Einstein or mystics or physicists possibly think
like they do and continue to function in everyday life?
Although the “logics” of new physics and mysticism sound very
different, at one level they both demand one very special skill, the
conscious co-creation of truth. They demand that we understand our
own role in known reality. The many research applications of my
theory (for example, to the quality of intimate adult relationships)
are pretty straightforward applications of that underlying ability, to
know that we partly co-create truth. This complex cognitive under-
lying ability can be used without anyone understanding some of the
more esoteric models I personally find useful in thinking about com-
plex postformal thought—for example, the theories of general sys-
tems theory, the “new” physics of relativity and quantum mechanics,
chaos theory, and theories of self-constructing systems.
For most of us, relationships, especially close relationships, are
some of the most important things in life. We are a social species.
Close relationships reach to the very heart of our happiness. Over a
lifetime, we see some intimate relationships become richer and more
meaningful to us, while others pale in importance, wither, and die.
Ironically, sometimes the more we grasp and fight to keep an impor-
tant relationship alive, the more we are sure that we know “what’s
going on” concerning the “reality” of the relationship or the partner,
the less the relationship seems to thrive. What is it that helps us learn
to relate more deeply, stay open to possible truths of the relationship,
and grow past the differences and problems that might divide us?
Adult development and aging are usually examined from the
point of view of loss. This book, by contrast, discusses positive adult
 Introduction | 5

development in the context of close relationships. It extends my the-

ory by focusing on the ways complex thought (postformal complex
thought) is important in creating and sustaining the close ongoing
relationships between intimate partners, between parents and chil-
dren, between siblings, and between close friends. This is not a claim
that cognition is the only important thing in a close relationship,
which is patently false. Rather, this book is written from the perspec-
tive that cognition is one important (and seldom studied) variable in
the success and satisfaction of close relationships.
Many books have been written for professionals and for laypersons
about marriage and other intimate partner relationships. Sometimes
these books are oriented toward the professional marriage or rela-
tionship counselor. Sometimes they are written to offer exercises for
couples who want to make love last. Some books are explorations
of theories, such as attachment theory or learning theory, and how
those theories are brought to bear specifically on the conduct of close
relationships. So many empirically oriented relationship books and
studies are focused on either parent–child relationships or on mate
choice and commitment (usually defined as legal marriage).
This book takes a somewhat different approach, by asking cog-
nitive questions about relationships. Although the book rests on a
theory that has been the basis for much research and writing, the
theory has not been explored extensively as it applies to relation-
ships. This book is intended to help fill that gap in understanding.
This book opens the exploration to all close relationships, including
marriage, friendships, sibling relationships, homosexual and hetero-
sexual relationships, and adult parent–child relationships. It explores
and addresses relationship dynamics across the lifespan using exam-
ples and cases.
The theoretical basis for the book is research on complex post-
formal thought, which concerns positive cognitive development dur-
ing adulthood and aging, research I started during my work at the
National Institute of Aging/National Institutes of Health (NIA/
NIH) and continued afterward over 30 years’ time. The book also
makes use of the theoretical and empirical work in fields related to
close relationships, for example, in attachment theory. My decades
of study of complex postformal thought and developmental cogni-
tion and their application in everyday life in adulthood have pro-
vided groundwork for understanding how the human mind processes
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