Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA.
The Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH, USA.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2022 Dec 29;77(12):2192-2201. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbac080.
Social-emotional well-being is said to improve over adulthood, and studies of couples' age differences have focused primarily on marital conflict. The way couples discuss their relationship story predicts marital quality among newlyweds and long-married couples alike, yet older and younger couples' accounts have never been compared. The current study examined age differences in couples' use of I/we-talk, emotion words, and immediacy (i.e., an urgent and unresolved style) during a relationship history discussion and their subsequent mood reactivity and appraisals.
Married couples (N = 186 individuals within 93 couples, aged 22-77) recounted the story of their relationship then rated the discussion and their negative mood. Mediation models assessed the 3 linguistic features as parallel dyadic mediators linking couple age to negative mood responses and appraisals, controlling for global marital satisfaction, and baseline negative mood. Secondary analyses examined partners' concordance in language use.
Compared with younger couples, older couples used more positive than negative words and less immediacy which, in turn, was associated with husbands' and wives' less negative mood and more positive appraisals, only among husbands. Partners in older couples used more similar I/we-talk and emotional language, but these were unrelated to mood or appraisals.
This study extends our understanding of how marital interactions differ by age in the understudied context of relationship history discussions, which may grow increasingly important for couples' well-being with older age. Findings broadly align with social-emotional aging theories and uncover novel linguistic features relevant to the age-related emotional benefits of joint reminiscing.
社交情感幸福感据称会随着成年而提高，而关于夫妻年龄差异的研究主要集中在婚姻冲突上。夫妻双方讨论关系史的方式可以预测新婚夫妇和结婚多年的夫妇的婚姻质量，但从未比较过老年夫妇和年轻夫妇的关系史叙述。本研究考察了在关系史讨论中，夫妻双方使用“我/我们”谈话、情感词汇和即时性（即紧急而未解决的风格）的年龄差异，以及随后的情绪反应和评价。
已婚夫妇（93 对夫妇中的 186 名个体，年龄 22-77 岁）讲述了他们关系的故事，然后对讨论和他们的负面情绪进行了评价。中介模型评估了 3 种语言特征作为平行的对偶中介，将夫妻年龄与负面情绪反应和评价联系起来，同时控制了整体婚姻满意度和基线负面情绪。次要分析检验了伴侣在语言使用上的一致性。
与年轻夫妇相比，老年夫妇使用的积极词汇多于消极词汇，即时性较低，这反过来又与丈夫和妻子的负面情绪较少、积极评价较高有关，仅在丈夫中如此。老年夫妇的伴侣使用的“我/我们”谈话和情感语言更为相似，但这些与情绪或评价无关。
本研究扩展了我们对关系史讨论中年龄如何影响婚姻互动的理解，这在关系史讨论这一研究较少的背景下可能对夫妻的幸福感变得越来越重要。研究结果与社会情感衰老理论广泛一致，并揭示了与共同回忆与年龄相关的情感益处相关的新的语言特征。
