Overcoming Barriers to Physical Activity in People with Osteoarthritis: the Role of Empathic Accuracy in Couples' Planning Discussions.

BACKGROUND: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common chronic joint disease with significant individual and public health consequences. Physical activity can reduce OA symptoms, but patients often fall below recommended levels. Social support from an intimate partner can help them become more active; however, some couples are better than others at enacting effective support. We examined the role of empathic accuracy (EA)-the ability to understand another person's thoughts and feelings-in couples' ability to identify strategies for overcoming barriers to increasing activity. We also examined whether EA was associated with changes in affect and with emotion regulation and communication skills. METHOD: Forty-two insufficiently physically active participants with OA identified a barrier to becoming more active in a recorded discussion with their partner. Next, both rated self and partner thoughts and feelings during the discussion. Raters coded EA and whether discussions reached a solution. Affect and skills were assessed with validated questionnaires. RESULTS: An actor-partner interdependence model found higher EA for participants in couples who reached a solution compared to those who did not reach a solution in the allotted time. Both partners' EA was associated with reduced negative affect in the other member of the couple. Unexpectedly, EA in people with OA was associated with reduced positive affect for their partners. EA was positively associated with one skill: emotional clarity. CONCLUSION: Findings from this early-stage study suggest that EA can help couples manage health-related issues together. Emotional clarity emerged as a skill related to EA, suggesting avenues for additional research.

Using Network Analysis for Examining Interpersonal Emotion Dynamics.

Several contemporary models conceptualize emotion as inherently interpersonal. We demonstrate how network analysis, a class of statistical methods often used to examine intrapersonal dynamic processes, provides a potential avenue for parameterizing interpersonal emotion dynamics (and interpersonal dynamics in general). We claim that this method allows (a) observing interpersonal dynamics at various temporal levels; (b) examining interpersonal dynamics occurring through various emotional pathways; and (c) capturing variations in interpersonal networks, which can subsequently be used to predict changes in outcomes. To demonstrate the potential of this method, we used dyadic daily diary data on emotion dynamics from two samples; Sample 1 involved couples in their routine daily lives, whereas Sample 2 involved couples in their transition to parenthood. Graphical Multilevel-Vector-Autoregressive modeling was used to estimate partners' emotional networks, whereas in a second step, LASSO was used to test the predictive value of couple-level differences of the obtained networks. The analysis revealed several patterns. For example, the between-couple network of Sample 1 was more interpersonally dense, but couple-level differences in the networks' interpersonal associations were predictive of partners' relationship satisfaction over time only in Sample 2. We also include commented code implementing a new dyadmlvar R package developed for conducting this analysis.

Egocentric Projection is a Rational Strategy for Accurate Emotion Prediction.

People need to accurately understand and predict others' emotions in order to build and maintain meaningful social connections. However, when they encounter new social partners, people often do not have enough information about them to make accurate inferences. Rather, they often resort to an egocentric heuristic, and make predictions about a target by using their own self-knowledge as a proxy. Is this egocentric heuristic a form of cognitive bias, or is it a rational strategy for real-world social prediction? If egocentrism provides a rational and effective solution to the challenging task of social prediction in naturalistic contexts, we should expect that a) egocentric predictions tend to be more accurate, and b) people rely on self-knowledge to a greater extent when it's more likely to be a good proxy. Using an emotion prediction task and personality measures, we assessed similarity and predictive accuracy between first-year college students and their new acquaintance roommate. Results demonstrated that, when people need to predict an unfamiliar target's emotions, self-knowledge can often effectively approximate knowledge about others, and thus support accurate predictions. Moreover, participants that were typical of the sample, whose self-knowledge can better approximate information about the target, relied more on self-knowledge in their predictions, and thus achieved higher accuracy. These findings suggest that people rationally tune their use of egocentrism based on whether it is likely to pay off. Overall, these findings demonstrate a rational side to a cognitive phenomenon usually framed as a cognitive pitfall, namely egocentric projection, when its natural decision context is taken into consideration.

I wanna hold your hand: Handholding is preferred over gentle stroking for emotion regulation.

Social touch is an important form of interpersonal emotion regulation. In recent years, the emotion regulation effects of two types of touch have been studied extensively: handholding and stroking (specifically of skin with C-tactile afferents on the forearm, i.e. C-touch). While some studies compare their effectiveness, with mixed results, no study to date has examined which type of touch is subjectively preferred. Given the potential bidirectional communication provided by handholding, we hypothesized that to regulate intense emotions, participants would prefer handholding. In four pre-registered online studies (total N = 287), participants rated handholding and stroking, presented in short videos, as emotion regulation methods. Study 1 examined touch reception preference in hypothetical situations. Study 2 replicated Study 1 while also examining touch provision preferences. Study 3 examined touch reception preferences of participants with blood/injection phobia in hypothetical injection situations. Study 4 examined types of touch participants who have recently given birth recalled receiving during childbirth and their hypothetical preferences. In all studies, participants preferred handholding over stroking; participants who have recently given birth reported receiving handholding more than stroking. This was especially evident in Studies 1-3 in emotionally intense situations. These results demonstrate that handholding is preferred over stroking as a form of emotion regulation, especially in intense situations, and support the importance of two-way sensory communication for emotion regulation via touch. We discuss the results and possible additional mechanisms, including top-down processing and cultural priming.

Inter-brain plasticity as a biological mechanism of change in psychotherapy: A review and integrative model.

Recent models of psychopathology and psychotherapy highlight the importance of interpersonal factors. The current review offers a biological perspective on these interpersonal processes by examining inter-brain synchrony-the coupling of brain activity between people interacting with one another. High inter-brain synchrony is associated with better relationships in therapy and in daily life, while deficits in the ability to achieve inter-brain synchrony are associated with a variety of psychological and developmental disorders. The review suggests that therapy improves patients' ability to achieve such synchrony through inter-brain plasticity-a process by which recurring exposure to high inter-brain synchrony leads to lasting change in a person's overall ability to synchronize. Therapeutic sessions provide repeated situations with high inter-brain synchrony. This can lead to a long-term increase in the ability to synchronize, first with the therapist, then generalized to other interpersonal relationships, ultimately leading to symptom reduction. The proposed inter-brain plasticity model offers a novel biological framework for understanding relational change in psychotherapy and its links to various forms of psychopathology and provides testable hypotheses for future research. Understanding this mechanism may help improve existing psychotherapy methods and develop new ones.

Emotional experience and metacognition among people with schizophrenia: Analysis of session by session and outcome of metacognitive-oriented psychotherapy.

BACKGROUND: Research suggests that in-session emotional experiences in psychotherapy promote both session and treatment outcomes across different clinical samples and treatment approaches. However, little is known about how this notion applies to clients with schizophrenia, who experience particular deficits related to emotional experience. To explore this question, we investigated the association between clients' emotional experience and their session outcome evaluations and metacognitive growth in a metacognitively-oriented treatment, Metacognitive Reflection and Insight Therapy (MERIT). MERIT is a recovery-oriented treatment approach for psychosis that focuses on recapturing a coherent sense of self and personal agency by enhancing metacognitive capacity. METHOD: Five-hundred-and-sixty-three sessions of 37 clients with schizophrenia who took part in an ongoing MERIT trial were analyzed. The Emotional Experience Self-Report (EE-SR) and Outcome Rating Scale (ORS) were collected on a session-by-session basis. Levels of metacognition ware assessed pre- and post-treatment using the Metacognitive Assessment Scale-Abbreviated (MAS-A) coding system. We used multilevel modeling to test our session-level predictions, and linear regression analysis for treatment-level predictions. RESULTS: Greater emotional experience, expression, and regulation within a session were associated with better session outcome. Regarding treatment level, greater emotional experience was associated with improvement in metacognitive mastery. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings reveal that experiencing emotions in MERIT has significant implications for clients' subjective well-being during therapy sessions and for their ability to respond to psychological challenges using metacognitive knowledge. These findings lend weight to the idea that emotional experience is a key mechanism of change in metacognitive therapy for schizophrenia.

Connections during crisis: Adolescents' social dynamics and mental health during COVID-19.

Adolescence is a critical period for social development, which COVID-19 has dramatically altered. Quarantined youths had limited in-person interactions with peers. The present study used an intensive longitudinal design to investigate changes in interpersonal dynamics and mental health during COVID-19. Specifically, we investigated whether the associations between different social contexts-that is, "spillover"-changed during COVID-19 and whether changes in social interactions during COVID-19 was associated with changes in depressive symptoms. Approximately 1 year prior to the onset of COVID-19, 139 youths reported depressive symptoms and daily interactions with parents, siblings, and friends, every day for 21 days via online questionnaires. Shortly after schools closed due to COVID-19, 115 of these youths completed a similar 28-day diary. Analyses included 112 youths (62 girls; 73% Caucasian; Mage = 11.77, range = 8 to 15 in Wave 1) who completed at least 13 diary days in each data wave. Our results show that younger adolescents experienced significant decreases in negative and positive interactions with friends, whereas older adolescents showed significant decreases in negative interactions with friends and significant increases in positive interactions with siblings. As predicted, within-day spillover of positive interactions and person-level association of negative interactions increased within the family during COVID-19, whereas within-day spillover of positive interactions between family and friends decreased. We also found a dramatic increase in depressive symptoms. More negative interactions and fewer positive interactions with family members were associated with changes in depressive symptoms. Our study sheds light on how youths' social development may be impacted by COVID-19. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Fast and Slow Empathic Perceptions in Couples' Daily Lives Use Different Cues.

Empathic accuracy, the ability to infer another person's emotions, thoughts, and other fleeting mental states, has been linked to assumed similarity (wherein the perceiver assumes that another person's mental states are similar to their own) and direct accuracy (wherein the perceiver uses various external cues to reach their judgment). Previous research has linked this component model, as well as dual process models, to neuroscientific models of empathy, but has not linked these components with dual process accounts directly. Thus, we examined whether assumed similarity involves rapid (type-1) processing while direct accuracy involves slower (type-2) inferences. In three dyadic daily diary samples (total N = 262 romantic couples), we examined associations between both components and response times. As expected, direct accuracy, but not assumed similarity, was associated with slower response times. Our findings suggest links between previously disparate lines of research and identify situations which may tip the balance between the empathic components.

Mom-and-Pop Narcissism: The Impact of Attention Seeking and Grandiosity on Couples' Experience of the Transition to Parenthood.

Various studies have demonstrated associations between personality disorders and relationship satisfaction. The authors examine the associations between attention seeking and grandiosity, both features of narcissistic personality disorder, and relationship satisfaction before and after the transition to parenthood. The authors then expand their analysis to parental satisfaction and postpartum depression (PPD). Nonclinical couples (N = 103 couples) expecting their first child completed measures of grandiosity, attention seeking, and relationship satisfaction before birth, and of relationship satisfaction, parental satisfaction, and PPD symptoms 3 months afterward. Attention seeking was associated with less parental satisfaction and more PPD symptoms, and with less prepartum relationship satisfaction for participants' partners. For men, attention seeking was also associated with prepartum relationship satisfaction. Grandiosity was associated with a decrease in relationship satisfaction after birth, although, surprisingly with fewer PPD symptoms for participants' partners. The authors discuss how these findings might be related to changes in social support and work-life balance during the transition to parenthood.

Imagery-based treatment for test anxiety: A multiple-baseline open trial.

BACKGROUND: Many students are affected by test anxiety (TA), which involves considerable distress and can lead to reduced performance. Despite its prevalence, TA has been under-studied; specifically, few effective and brief interventions have been identified to date. In our work, we explore the adaptation of imagery, an emotion-focused treatment technique used widely in the treatment of other anxiety disorders, for addressing TA. METHODS: In a two-site concurrent multiple-baseline pilot study (n = 31), we examined the effectiveness of a targeted six-session protocol developed for the treatment of TA, which integrates traditional cognitive behavioral techniques with imagery work. RESULTS: The protocol was well-accepted by clients. We found that students' test anxiety levels did not drop between the recruitment and pre-intervention assessments, but did drop significantly from recruitment or baseline to the delayed follow-up (Cohen's d = 0.75 and 0.84, respectively). We also found evidence for session-level processes tying the quality of the imagery work with session efficacy. LIMITATIONS: The study involved a relatively small sample size, leading to weaker power to detect treatment effects. Moreover, some clients did not have any exams scheduled before the delayed follow-up assessment. Due to the scheduling intensity of the sessions, some clients had insufficient time to implement or practice skills and to complete tasks discussed in the sessions. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides preliminary evidence for the utility of integrating imagery work with traditional cognitive-behavioral techniques for treating test anxiety.

Now you have my attention: Empathic accuracy pathways in couples and the role of conflict.

Recent research on empathy finds evidence for 2 different pathways that enable individuals to accurately infer other persons' inner mental states: an automatic, indirect pathway that operates by having a mental state similar to the target's and (correctly) assuming that this state is similar to the target's, and a more controlled direct pathway that involves assessing the target's mental state with no regard for one's own. We present 3 daily diary studies (N = 53, 38 and 80 couples) examining the contribution of these pathways to empathic accuracy in daily assessments of romantic partners' negative moods, and examine the effects of gender and relational conflict on these pathways. Our studies revealed that both pathways consistently contributed to accuracy. Additionally, partners demonstrated greater indirect accuracy on conflict (vs. nonconflict) days, and indirect accuracy was somewhat higher for women than for men on conflict days (with the opposite pattern on nonconflict days). More importantly, we found evidence for a novel third pathway, in which the perception of conflict itself led to (correct) higher estimation of negative affect and thus, to higher accuracy. This pathway figured more consistently for men than for women. In our discussion, we link the pathways obtained in these studies to the extant social neuroscientific literature on empathy systems, arguing that the indirect pathway involves the effects of experience sharing, while the direct and conflict-based pathways involve the mental state attributions (Zaki & Ochsner, 2011). These findings demonstrate the importance of examining various empathic pathways for the understanding of empathic processes. (PsycINFO Database Record

Empathic accuracy and relationship satisfaction: A meta-analytic review.

Empathic accuracy (EA; Ickes & Hodges, 2013) is the extent to which people accurately perceive their peers' thoughts, feelings, and other inner mental states. EA has particularly interested researchers in the context of romantic couples. Reviews of the literature suggest a possible link between romantic partners' EA and their relationship satisfaction (Ickes & Simpson, 2001; Sillars & Scott, 1983). To assess the magnitude of this association and examine possible moderators, we performed a meta-analytic review of 21 studies (total N = 2,739 participants) that examined the association between EA and satisfaction. We limited our review to studies measuring EA using the dyadic interaction paradigm (Ickes, Stinson, Bissonnette, & Garcia, 1990). We found a small but significant association between the two (r = .134, p < .05). Subsequent moderation analyses demonstrated that EA for negative emotions (one's accuracy when assessing a partner's negative emotions) was more closely related to satisfaction (r = .171, p < .05) than EA for positive ones (r = .068, p > .1). The association was also stronger in relationships of moderate length, suggesting that EA may be more meaningful when relationships are consolidating but before they become stable. Gender and procedural variations on the dyadic interaction paradigm did not moderate the association, and there was no difference depending on whether the association was between EA and perceivers' or targets' satisfaction (i.e., actor or partner effects). We discuss the implications of these findings and offer recommendations for future EA studies. (PsycINFO Database Record