Data_Sheet_1_Spillover Effects When Taking Turns in Dyadic Coping: How Lingering Negative Affect and Perceived Partner Responsiveness Shape Subsequent Support Provision.pdf

When experiencing personal distress, people usually expect their romantic partner to be supportive. However, when put in a situation to provide support, people may at times (still) be struggling with issues of their own. This interdependent nature of dyadic coping interactions as well as potential spillover effects is mirrored in the state-of-the-art research method to behaviorally assess couple’s dyadic coping processes. This paradigm typically includes two videotaped 8-min dyadic coping conversations in which partners swap roles as sharer and support provider. Little is known about how such dyadic coping interactions may feed back into one another, impacting the motivation and ability to be a responsive support provider. In three behavioral studies, we examined how sharers’ experiences may spill over to affect their own support provision in a subsequent dyadic coping interaction. We hypothesized that the extent to which sharers perceive their partner as responsive to their self-disclosure increases the quality of their own subsequent support provision (Hypothesis 1), whereas sharers’ lingering negative affect reduces the quality of their own subsequent support provision (Hypothesis 2). In line with our first hypothesis, perceived partner responsiveness predicted the provision of higher-quality support, though primarily as perceived by the partner. Sharers who perceived their partner to have been more responsive were somewhat more likely to subsequently engage in positive dyadic coping and were rated as more responsive by their partners. Negative dyadic coping behavior was unaffected. Evidence for our second hypothesis was mixed. While lingering negative affect did not affect positive dyadic coping behavior or perceived support, it did increase the chances of negative dyadic coping behavior. However, given the very low occurrences of negative affect and negative dyadic coping, these findings should be interpreted with caution. Taken together, these findings suggest that support interactions may feed back into one another, highlighting the complex and interdependent nature of dyadic coping. The strongest and most consistent findings concerned the spillover effect of perceived partner responsiveness on subsequent perceived support quality, speaking to the key role of believing that one’s partner is responsive to one’s needs in promoting healthy relationship functioning.

当个体遭遇个人困境时，通常会期望其浪漫伴侣给予支持。然而，当需要自身提供支持时，人们有时（仍）可能正受自身问题的困扰。这种二元应对（dyadic coping）互动的相互依存本质，以及潜在的溢出效应，在当前用于行为评估伴侣二元应对过程的前沿研究方法中得到了体现。该范式通常包含两段录制的8分钟二元应对对话，对话中伴侣会互换倾诉者与支持提供者的角色。目前学界对这类二元应对互动如何相互反馈，进而影响个体作为响应式支持提供者的动机与能力的相关研究尚少。在三项行为研究中，我们探讨了倾诉者的体验会如何溢出，进而影响其在后续二元应对互动中的支持提供行为。我们提出如下假设：其一，倾诉者感知到伴侣对其自我表露（self-disclosure）的响应程度越高，其后续提供的支持质量便越高（假设1）；其二，倾诉者挥之不去的负性情绪会降低其后续提供的支持质量（假设2）。研究结果与假设1相符：感知到的伴侣响应性（perceived partner responsiveness）能够预测更高质量的支持提供行为，不过这一效应主要体现在伴侣视角下的评价中。那些感知到伴侣响应性更高的倾诉者，后续更可能采取积极二元应对（positive dyadic coping）行为，且其伴侣会将其评价为更具响应性；而消极二元应对（negative dyadic coping）行为则未受显著影响。针对假设2的证据则喜忧参半：挥之不去的负性情绪并未对积极二元应对行为或感知到的支持质量产生影响，但确实增加了个体出现消极二元应对行为的概率。不过，鉴于负性情绪与消极二元应对行为的发生率极低，对该结果的解读需谨慎。综上，这些研究结果表明，支持互动可能会相互反馈，凸显了二元应对的复杂且相互依存的本质。其中最显著且一致的发现，是感知到的伴侣响应性对后续感知到的支持质量的溢出效应，这印证了“相信伴侣能够响应自身需求”在促进健康的亲密关系功能运转中的关键作用。