Lau Kevin K H, Randall Ashley K, Duran Nicholas D, Tao Chun
Couples Coping with Stress Laboratory, Counseling and Counseling Psychology, College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States.
DynamiCog Laboratory, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Arizona State University, Glendale, AZ, United States.
Front Psychol. 2019 Jan 15;9:2598. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02598. eCollection 2018.
Stress in romantic relationships is an all-too-common phenomenon that has detrimental effects on relationship well-being. Specifically, stress can lead to negative interactions between partners and ultimately decrease relationship functioning. The systemic-transactional model of dyadic coping posits that by effectively communicating stress and coping with one's romantic partner, couples can mitigate the deleterious effects of stress. Specifically, partners can engage in positive dyadic coping, which may foster couples' sense of "we-ness," strengthen their emotional connection, and facilitate their understanding of each other's stressful experiences. However, these associations have not yet been examined during partners' real-time stress conversations. When assessing dyadic coping, a particular aspect of interest is partners' language use (i.e., pronouns, emotion words, and cognition words), as it may reflect the types of support they communicate to one another. Using real-time interaction data from 41 heterosexual couples, this study examined how couples' stress and coping processes affect perceived interaction quality following discussions of stress. Specifically, language use (i.e., pronouns, emotion words, and cognition words) was assessed as a mediator on the association between observed stress communication and perceived interaction quality. Overall, results supported our hypotheses; when one partner communicated stress, the other partner responded with language use indicative of different types of dyadic coping (i.e., more you-talk and use of emotion words, less we-talk, I-talk, and use of cognition words), which were in turn associated with interaction quality in mixed directions. Implications of these findings for romantic couples are discussed.
浪漫关系中的压力是一种极为常见的现象，会对关系的幸福产生不利影响。具体而言，压力会导致伴侣之间产生负面互动，并最终降低关系的功能。二元应对的系统交易模型认为，通过有效地与浪漫伴侣沟通压力并应对压力，夫妻可以减轻压力的有害影响。具体来说，伴侣可以进行积极的二元应对，这可能会增强夫妻的“我们感”，加强他们的情感联系，并促进他们对彼此压力经历的理解。然而，这些关联尚未在伴侣的实时压力对话中得到检验。在评估二元应对时，一个特别感兴趣的方面是伴侣的语言使用（即代词、情感词和认知词），因为它可能反映了他们相互传达的支持类型。本研究使用来自41对异性恋夫妻的实时互动数据，考察了夫妻的压力和应对过程如何在讨论压力后影响感知到的互动质量。具体而言，语言使用（即代词、情感词和认知词）被评估为观察到的压力沟通与感知到的互动质量之间关联的中介变量。总体而言，结果支持了我们的假设；当一方伴侣沟通压力时，另一方伴侣会用表明不同类型二元应对的语言做出回应（即更多的“你”相关表述和情感词的使用，更少的“我们”相关表述、“我”相关表述和认知词的使用），这些回应又在不同方向上与互动质量相关。讨论了这些发现对浪漫情侣的启示。
