Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California.
School of Behavioral Studies, The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Israel.
Psychophysiology. 2019 Nov;56(11):e13443. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13443. Epub 2019 Aug 3.
In times of need, people seek comfort and support from close others. Support provision is an integral component of attachment relationships, one that is linked with physical and psychological well-being. Successful support provision is believed to be grounded in transactions of sensitive, caring behavior between caregivers and support seekers and to serve a profound regulatory function. However, physiological processes underlying support transactions have not been previously studied. We assessed autonomic vagal regulation and coded spontaneous emotional support behaviors in N = 100 heterosexual couples involved in a support interaction. We focused on cardiac vagal activation, operationalized as the increase in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) from baseline to interaction, as an indicator of regulatory efforts. Analyses revealed a negative association between caregivers' and support seekers' regulatory efforts, which was mediated by emotional support behaviors. We found that caregivers with greater increases in RSA from baseline to interaction provided more emotional support to their partners. Such emotional support was associated with smaller increases in support seekers' RSA and with support seekers' perceptions of their partners as being more sensitive to their needs. Finally, these links were only significant among dyads in which caregivers reported lower levels of attachment anxiety. We interpret these results in the framework of interpersonal regulatory processes, suggesting that provision of support may impose regulatory demands on the side of the caregivers, which in turn could result in attenuated regulatory efforts and positive partner perceptions for the support seekers.
在需要的时候，人们会从亲近的人那里寻求安慰和支持。支持提供是依恋关系的一个组成部分，与身心健康有关。人们认为，成功的支持提供是以照顾者和寻求支持者之间敏感、关爱的行为交流为基础的，并起到了深远的调节作用。然而，支持交易背后的生理过程以前并没有被研究过。我们评估了 100 对参与支持互动的异性恋夫妇的自主迷走神经调节和自发情感支持行为，并将焦点放在心脏迷走神经激活上，即呼吸窦性心律失常（RSA）从基线到互动的增加，作为调节努力的指标。分析显示，照顾者和寻求支持者的调节努力之间存在负相关，这是由情感支持行为介导的。我们发现，从基线到互动时 RSA 增加较多的照顾者会向伴侣提供更多的情感支持。这种情感支持与寻求支持者的 RSA 增加幅度较小以及寻求支持者对伴侣更敏感的感知有关。最后，这些联系仅在那些照顾者报告较低依恋焦虑水平的伴侣中显著。我们在人际调节过程的框架内解释这些结果，表明支持的提供可能会对照顾者一方提出调节要求，这反过来可能会导致照顾者的调节努力减弱，以及寻求支持者对伴侣的积极感知。
