Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Ann Behav Med. 2023 Aug 21;57(9):753-764. doi: 10.1093/abm/kaad017.
The experience of cancer can create considerable emotional distress for patients and their committed partners. How couples communicate about cancer-related concerns can have important implications for adjustment. However, past research has primarily utilized cross-sectional designs and retrospective self-reports of couple communication. While informative, little is known about how patients and partners express emotion during conversations about cancer, and how these emotional patterns predict individual and relational adjustment.
The current investigation examined how patterns of emotional arousal within couples' communication about cancer was associated with concurrent and prospective individual psychological and relational adjustment.
At baseline, 133 patients with stage II- breast, lung, or colorectal cancer and their partners completed a conversation about a cancer-related concern. Vocally expressed emotional arousal (f0) was extracted from recorded conversations. Couples completed self-report measures of individual psychological and relational adjustment at baseline and at 4, 8, and 12 months later.
Couples who started the conversation higher in f0 (i.e., greater emotional arousal) reported better individual and relational adjustment at baseline. If the non-cancer partner had lower f0 relative to patients, this predicted worse individual adjustment across follow-up. Additionally, couples who maintained their level of f0 rather than decreasing later in the conversation reported improvements in individual adjustment across follow-up.
Elevated emotional arousal within a cancer-related conversation may be adaptive for adjustment, as it may reflect greater emotional engagement and processing of an important topic. These results may suggest ways for therapists to guide emotional engagement to enhance resilience in couples experiencing cancer.
癌症经历会给患者及其伴侣带来相当大的情绪困扰。夫妻双方如何沟通癌症相关问题可能对调整有重要影响。然而，过去的研究主要采用横断面设计和对夫妻沟通的回顾性自我报告。虽然这些研究提供了有价值的信息，但对于患者和伴侣在谈论癌症时表达情绪的方式，以及这些情绪模式如何预测个体和关系调整，我们知之甚少。
本研究考察了夫妻双方在谈论癌症时的情绪唤醒模式如何与个体的心理和关系调整的同期和前瞻性变化相关。
在基线时，133 名患有 II 期乳腺癌、肺癌或结直肠癌的患者及其伴侣完成了一次关于癌症相关问题的对话。从记录的对话中提取出声音表达的情绪唤醒（f0）。夫妻双方在基线时以及 4、8 和 12 个月后完成了个体心理和关系调整的自我报告测量。
在开始对话时 f0 较高（即情绪唤醒较高）的夫妻在基线时报告了更好的个体和关系调整。如果非癌症伴侣的 f0 相对患者较低，这预示着在随访过程中个体调整会更差。此外，如果夫妻双方在对话过程中保持而不是降低 f0 的水平，那么他们的个体调整会在随访过程中得到改善。
在与癌症相关的对话中，较高的情绪唤醒可能对调整是适应性的，因为它可能反映了对重要话题的更大情感投入和处理。这些结果可能为治疗师提供了指导情感投入的方法，以增强正在经历癌症的夫妻的适应能力。
