The COVID-19 pandemic along with the restrictions that were introduced within Europe starting in spring 2020 allows for the identification of predictors for relationship quality during unstable and stressful times. The present study began as strict measures were enforced in response to the rising spread of the COVID-19 virus within Austria, Poland, Spain and Czech Republic. Here, we investigated quality of romantic relationships among 313 participants as movement restrictions were implemented and subsequently phased out cross-nationally. Participants completed self-report questionnaires over a period of 7 weeks, where we predicted relationship quality and change in relationship quality using machine learning models that included a variety of potential predictors related to psychological, demographic and environmental variables. On average, our machine learning models predicted 29% (linear models) and 22% (non-linear models) of the variance with regard to relationship quality. Here, the most important predictors consisted of attachment style (anxious attachment being more influential than avoidant), age, and number of conflicts within the relationship. Interestingly, environmental factors such as the local severity of the pandemic did not exert a measurable influence with respect to predicting relationship quality. As opposed to overall relationship quality, the change in relationship quality during lockdown restrictions could not be predicted accurately by our machine learning models when utilizing our selected features. In conclusion, we demonstrate cross-culturally that attachment security is a major predictor of relationship quality during COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, whereas fear, pathogenic threat, sexual behavior, and the severity of governmental regulations did not significantly influence the accuracy of prediction.

Department of Cognition Emotion and Methods in Psychology University of Vienna Vienna Austria

Department of Psychiatry Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics Psychiatric Hospital University of Zurich Zurich Switzerland

Department of Psychology Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem Ústí nad Labem Czechia

Faculty of Psychology University of Barcelona Barcelona Spain

Faculty of Science Charles University Prague Czechia

Institute of Psychology University of Wrocław Wrocław Poland

Neuroscience Center Zürich University of Zürich and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich Switzerland

Zürich Center for Integrative Human Physiology University of Zürich Zurich Switzerland

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