Feeling loved as a strong link in relationship interactions: Partners who feel loved may buffer destructive behavior by actors who feel unloved.

Feeling loved (loved, cared for, accepted, valued, understood) is inherently dyadic, yet most prior theoretical perspectives and investigations have focused on how actors feeling (un)loved shapes actors' outcomes. Adopting a dyadic perspective, the present research tested whether the established links between actors feeling unloved and destructive (critical, hostile) behavior depended on partners' feelings of being loved. Does feeling loved need to be mutual to reduce destructive behavior, or can partners feeling loved compensate for actors feeling unloved? In five dyadic observational studies, couples were recorded discussing conflicts, diverging preferences or relationship strengths, or interacting with their child (total N = 842 couples; 1,965 interactions). Participants reported how much they felt loved during each interaction and independent coders rated how much each person exhibited destructive behavior. Significant Actors' × Partners' Felt-Loved interactions revealed a strong-link/mutual felt-unloved pattern: partners' high felt-loved buffered the damaging effect of actors' low felt-loved on destructive behavior, resulting in actors' destructive behavior mostly occurring when both actors' and partners' felt-loved was low. This dyadic pattern also emerged in three supplemental daily sampling studies. Providing directional support for the strong-link/mutual felt-unloved pattern, in Studies 4 and 5 involving two or more sequential interactions, Actors' × Partners' Felt-Loved in one interaction predicted actors' destructive behavior within couples' subsequent conflict interactions. The results illustrate the dyadic nature of feeling loved: Partners feeling loved can protect against actors feeling unloved in challenging interactions. Assessing Actor × Partner effects should be equally valuable for advancing understanding of other fundamentally dyadic relationship processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Actor and partner power are distinct and have differential effects on social behavior.

Interpersonal power involves how much actors can influence partners (actor power) and how much partners can influence actors (partner power). Yet, most theories and investigations of power conflate the effects of actor and partner power, creating a fundamental ambiguity in the literature regarding how power shapes social behavior. We demonstrate that actor and partner power are distinct and have differential effects on social behavior. Six studies (total N = 1,787) tested whether actor and partner power independently predicted behavioral inhibition (expressive suppression) and communal behavior (prioritization of partners' needs) within close relationships, including during couples' daily life (Study 1), lab-based social interactions (Studies 1-5; 1,012 dyadic interactions), and general responses during conflict (Studies 5 and 6). Actor power was negatively associated with behavioral inhibition, indicating that actors' low power prompts self-focused inhibition to prevent negative outcomes that low power actors are unable to control. Partner power was positively associated with actors' communal behavior, indicating that high partner power prompts other-focused behavior that prioritizes partners' needs and goals. These differential effects of actor and partner power replicated in work-based relationships with bosses/managers (Study 6). Unexpectedly, partner power was negatively associated with actors' behavioral inhibition within close relationships, consistent with a desire to prevent negative outcomes for low power partners. We present a framework that integrates the approach-inhibition and agentic-communal theories of power to account for the differential effects of actor and partner power. We describe the implications of this framework for understanding the effects of power in both close and hierarchical relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Enduring COVID-19 lockdowns: Risk versus resilience in parents' health and family functioning across the pandemic.

Have the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic risked declines in parents' health and family functioning, or have most parents been resilient and shown no changes in health and family functioning? Assessing average risk versus resilience requires examining how families have fared across the pandemic, beyond the initial months examined in prior investigations. The current research examines changes in parents' health and functioning over the first 1.5 years of the pandemic. Parents (N = 272) who had completed general pre-pandemic assessments completed reassessments of psychological/physical health, couple/family functioning, and parenting within two mandatory lockdowns in New Zealand: at the beginning of the pandemic (26 March-28 April 2020) and 17 months later (18 August-21 September 2021). Parents exhibited average declines in psychological/physical health (greater depressive symptoms; reduced well-being, energy and physical health) and in couple/family functioning (reduced commitment and family cohesion; greater problem severity and family chaos). By contrast, there were no average differences in parent-child relationship quality and parenting practices across lockdowns. Declines in health and couple/family functioning occurred irrespective of pre-pandemic health and functioning, but partner support buffered declines in couple/family functioning. The results emphasize that attending to the challenges parents and couples face in the home will be important to mitigate and recover from the impact of the pandemic on parents' and children's well-being.

A dyadic perspective of expressive suppression: Own or partner suppression weakens relationships.

In the current research, we apply a dyadic perspective of expressive suppression (ES) to test whether ES represents a weak link, such that either actors' or partners' ES is sufficient to undermine relationship satisfaction. Our primary aim was to test this weak-link pattern by modeling Actor × Partner ES interactions on relationship satisfaction. To maximize power, we conducted integrative data analyses across four existing dyadic samples (N = 427 couples) that included self-reports of habitual ES and relationship satisfaction. Our second aim was to examine the role of conflict resolution ability as one potential mechanism for the ES weak-link pattern on satisfaction. These integrative data analyses involved two dyadic samples (N = 242 couples) that included self-reports of conflict resolution ability. Significant Actor × Partner ES interactions revealed a weak-link pattern: greater actors' or partners' ES was associated with lower relationship satisfaction. Accordingly, actors' lower ES was associated with higher satisfaction only when partners' ES was also low. This ES weak-link pattern also emerged for conflict resolution ability, which provided evidence that reduced conflict resolution ability is one interpersonal process that contributes to the weak-link pattern on satisfaction. ES likely operates as a weak link because actors' or partners' ES interferes with the coordination, cooperation, and connection needed to manage relationship challenges and sustain healthy relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Biased memories contribute to the links between stress and depressive symptoms.

Perceived stress undermines emotional wellbeing, and poorer emotional wellbeing may intensify perceived stress. The current studies examined whether biased memories contribute to the possible reciprocal links between perceived stress and depressive symptoms. Two longitudinal studies compared the stress people perceived for several weeks (Study 1, N = 308) or during a conflict interaction (Study 2, N = 261) with memories of perceived stress gathered in subsequent weeks. People with low depressive symptoms remembered their past as involving less perceived stress than they initially experienced (positive bias). By contrast, people with average or higher levels of depressive symptoms remembered their past as involving exactly as much perceived stress as initially experienced (depressive realism) or, at very high levels of depressive symptoms, more perceived stress than initially experienced (negative bias). These memory biases had important implications. Accounting for initial levels of perceived stress, more negative memories of perceived stress predicted greater weekly depressed mood (Study 1) and greater depressive symptoms across time (Study 2). Evaluating whether life has involved as much perceived stress as now remembered may help facilitate emotional wellbeing in the face of rising perceived stress and depressive symptoms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Parents' distress and poor parenting during a COVID-19 lockdown: The buffering effects of partner support and cooperative coparenting.

The COVID-19 pandemic is placing demands on parents that may amplify the risk of parents' distress and poor parenting. Leveraging a prepandemic study in New Zealand, the current research tested whether parents' psychological distress during a mandated lockdown predicts relative residual changes in poorer parenting and whether partner support and cooperative coparenting buffer this potentially detrimental effect. Participants included 362 parents; 310 were from the same family (155 dyads). Parents had completed assessments of psychological distress and parenting prior to the pandemic and then reported on their distress, parenting, partner support, and cooperative coparenting during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. Parents' distress during the lockdown predicted relative residual increases in harsh parenting, but this effect was buffered by partner support. Parents' distress also predicted residual decreases in warm/responsive parenting and parent-child relationship quality, but these effects were buffered by cooperative coparenting. Partner support and cooperative coparenting are important targets for future research and interventions to help parents navigate challenging family contexts, including COVID-19 lockdowns. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion regulation and psychological and physical health during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown.

The current research tests the links between emotion regulation and psychological and physical health during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1, parents (N = 365) who had reported on their psychological and physical health prior to the pandemic completed the same health assessments along with their use of emotion regulation strategies when confined in the home with their school-aged children during a nationwide lockdown. In Study 2, individuals (N = 1,607) from a nationally representative panel study completed similar measures of psychological and physical health and use of emotion regulation strategies one-year prior to the lockdown and then again during the lockdown. Accounting for prepandemic psychological health, greater rumination and emotional suppression were independently associated with poorer psychological health (greater depressive symptoms and psychological distress, lower emotional and personal well-being), even when controlling for the emotional challenges of the pandemic (emotion control difficulties, perceived support; Studies 1 and 2) and a range of demographic covariates (Study 2). Greater rumination was also associated with greater fatigue in both studies, but greater rumination and emotional suppression were only independently associated with poorer perceptions of physical health in Study 2. The results for cognitive reappraisal were mixed; positive associations with personal well-being and general health only emerged in Study 2. The results provide evidence that key models in affective science help explain differences in psychological and physical health within the throes of a real-world demanding context and thus offer targets to help facilitate health and resilience during the pandemic (and other crises). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Sexist attitudes predict family-based aggression during a COVID-19 lockdown.

The current research examined whether men's hostile sexism was a risk factor for family-based aggression during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in which families were confined to the home for 5 weeks. Parents who had reported on their sexist attitudes and aggressive behavior toward intimate partners and children prior to the COVID-19 pandemic completed assessments of aggressive behavior toward their partners and children during the lockdown (N = 362 parents of which 310 were drawn from the same family). Accounting for pre-lockdown levels of aggression, men who more strongly endorsed hostile sexism reported greater aggressive behavior toward their intimate partners and their children during the lockdown. The contextual factors that help explain these longitudinal associations differed across targets of family-based aggression. Men's hostile sexism predicted greater aggression toward intimate partners when men experienced low power during couples' interactions, whereas men's hostile sexism predicted greater aggressive parenting when men reported lower partner-child relationship quality. Novel effects also emerged for benevolent sexism. Men's higher benevolent sexism predicted lower aggressive parenting, and women's higher benevolent sexism predicted greater aggressive behavior toward partners, irrespective of power and relationship quality. The current study provides the first longitudinal demonstration that men's hostile sexism predicts residual changes in aggression toward both intimate partners and children. Such aggressive behavior will intensify the health, well-being, and developmental costs of the pandemic, highlighting the importance of targeting power-related gender role beliefs when screening for aggression risk and delivering therapeutic and education interventions as families face the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Does expressing emotions enhance perceptual accuracy of negative emotions during relationship interactions?

Partners' negative emotions communicate social information necessary for individuals to respond appropriately to important relational events. Yet, there is inconsistent evidence regarding whether partners' emotional expression enhances accurate perceptions of partners' emotions. The current studies make methodological and theoretical extensions to the extant literature by directly assessing whether partners' emotional expression during relationship interactions predicts 2 types of accuracy relevant to the theorized interpersonal functions of negative emotions: tracking accuracy and directional bias. In Studies 1 and 2, both members of recruited couples reported on their own negative emotions, disclosure of emotions, and perceptions of their partners' negative emotions during relationship interactions at the end of each day for 21 days. In Study 3, couples engaged in an emotionally relevant discussion in the laboratory. Participants immediately reviewed their discussions and rated their own negative emotions and perceptions of their partners' negative emotions within each 30-s segment of the discussion. Independent coders rated the degree to which each person expressed their emotions during the discussion. In all three studies, partners' greater emotional expression predicted perceivers more accurately tracking partners' negative emotions (greater tracking accuracy). High levels of partners' emotional expression also predicted perceivers overestimating partners' negative emotions (greater directional bias). This expression-perception pattern should support the interpersonal function of negative emotions by orienting perceivers to important emotional events that would be costly to overlook. The results, considered in the context of prior research, highlight the importance of matching methodological approaches with the theoretical processes under investigation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Expressive suppression tendencies, projection bias in memory of negative emotions, and well-being.

The current research extends prior research linking negative emotions and emotion regulation tendencies to memory by investigating whether (a) naturally occurring negative emotions during routine weekly life are associated with more negatively biased memories of prior emotional experiences-a bias called projection; (b) tendencies to regulate emotions via expressive suppression are associated with greater projection bias in memory of negative emotions; and (c) greater projection bias in memory is associated with poorer future well-being. Participants (N = 308) completed a questionnaire assessing their general tendencies to engage in expressive suppression. Then, every week for 7 weeks, participants reported on (a) the negative emotions they experienced across the current week (e.g., "This week, I felt 'sad'"), (b) their memories of the negative emotions they experienced the prior week (e.g., "Last week, I felt 'sad'"), and (c) their well-being. First, participants demonstrated significant projection bias in memory: Greater negative emotions in a given week were associated with remembering emotions in the prior week more negatively than those prior emotions were originally reported. Second, projection bias in memory of negative emotions was greater for individuals who reported greater tendencies to regulate emotions via expressive suppression. Third, greater projection bias in memory of negative emotions was associated with reductions in well-being across weeks. These 3 novel findings indicate that (a) current negative emotions bias memory of past emotions, (b) this memory bias is magnified for people who habitually use expressive suppression to regulate emotions, and (c) this memory bias may undermine well-being over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).