Relatively Happy: The Role of the Positive-to-Negative Affect Ratio in Japanese and Belgian Couples

Satisfied couples in European-American cultural contexts experience higher ratios of positive to negative affect during interactions than their less satisfied counterparts. The current research tests the possibility that this finding is culture-bound. It compares proportions of positive to negative affect during couple interactions in two different cultural contexts: Belgium and Japan. Whereas Belgian relationship goals (e.g., mutual affirmation and self-esteem) call for the experience of positive affect, Japanese relationship goals (e.g., harmony and self-adjustment) call for the avoidance of negative affect. We propose that these differences result in different affect ratios in close relationships. To test this idea, we tracked positive and negative feelings during couple interactions. Fifty-eight Belgian and 80 Japanese romantic couples took part in a lab interaction study, in which they discussed a topic of disagreement. Using a video-mediated recall, participants rated their positive and negative feelings during the interaction; relationship satisfaction was assessed before the interaction. As expected, Belgian couples’ positive-to-negative affect ratios were more positive than those of Japanese couples. Furthermore, in both cultures relationship satisfaction was positively associated with more positive affect ratios, but this effect was significantly stronger for Belgian than Japanese couples. Finally, mediation analyses showed that higher affect ratios were achieved in culturally different and meaningful ways: satisfied Belgian couples showed higher ratios primarily through higher levels of positive feelings, whereas satisfied Japanese couples showed higher ratios primarily through lower levels of negative feelings.

The Relationship Between Pronoun Use in Couple Interactions, Attachment, and Relationship Satisfaction

Research shows pronoun use may be related to relationship factors. Our research invited 40 couples (adults mostly partnered for 2 or fewer years) to engage in a 15-min conversation after completing demographics, attachment, and relationship satisfaction measures. Romantic partners tended to use pronouns similarly. Attachment anxiety and avoidance were related to lower relationship satisfaction. Bivariate actor partner interdependence models showed when men used we pronouns, lower relationship satisfaction was reported in both partners. When men used I pronouns, women were more likely to use we pronouns. When men used you pronouns, women were more likely to use I pronouns and engage in more attachment avoidant behaviors. Findings suggest communication patterns may be interpreted differently by younger couples. Couples therapists may want to investigate communication patterns to create a new dialogue that increases relationship satisfaction and limits insecure attachment behaviors.

Saying “I Don’t Know”: A Video-Based Study on Physicians’ Claims of No-Knowledge in Assisted Reproductive Technology Consultations

IntroductionThe assisted reproductive technology (ART) field deals with consistent and predictable gaps in knowledge. Expressing lack of knowledge with a sentence like “I don’t know” can be challenging for doctors. This study examined physicians’ negative epistemic disclaimer “non lo so” in Italian ART doctor-couple interactions. In particular, it aimed to reveal specific features of “non lo so”: function, topic, temporality, responsibility, and interactional aspects.MethodsThis was a video-based observational study. We used microanalysis of face-to-face dialogue to analyze 20 purposively selected triadic consultations from a corpus of 85. This inductive analysis focused on the function, the content (topic and temporality) and some selected interactional aspects of the “non lo so”, quantifying and capturing the interaction between these qualitative features.ResultsWe found 82 doctors’ “non lo so” in the corpus (mean = 4.4; range = 0–15). We discovered three main functions of this expression: propositional (n = 73/82), relational (n = 6/82), discursive (n = 3/82). The most frequent topics raising doctors’ “non lo so” were costs (n = 11/82), treatment-related aspects (n = 10/82), and timing issues (n = 9/82). In more than half of the cases (n = 44/82), present issues emerged. The majority (n = 70/82) of “non lo so” was framed using the “I,” with doctors’ taking personal responsibility. Patients played a role in these expressions from doctors: Patients initiated more than one third of them, and in one fourth of the cases, patients followed up immediately.ConclusionOur findings may be related to characteristics of the specific field of ART. Doctors in this setting must frequently express a direct lack of knowledge to their patients, and when they do, they mean it literally. Patients contribute to such disclosures, and their responses suggest that they find them acceptable, showing that they may expect limitations in their potential to conceive.

LEISURE, LONGITUDINALLY: PARTNER DISAGREEMENTS ABOUT LEISURE DECREASE OVER THE LIFE COURSE

Leisure is a major context within which older couples interact, and researchers have recently called for more longitudinal data analysis exploring how leisure-related couple interactions change over the life course. Several waves of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study include a single-item question asking respondents how much they disagree with their spouse or partner about leisure activities. Given the longitudinal nature of MIDUS, the variable offers great utility to explore shifts in leisure-related couple interactions over the life course. Utilizing longitudinal data from Wave 1 (1995-1997), 2 (2004-2006), and 3 (2013-2015) of the MIDUS study, we explored how leisure-related partner disagreement changed with increased age (age range = 20-93). We first ran an unconditional multilevel model, which revealed that 68% of the variation in leisure-related spousal disagreement was attributed to within-person differences over time, justifying our analysis of longitudinal within-person change. An age-based growth curve model then revealed that leisure-related partner disagreements decreased linearly over the life course (Estimate = -0.01, SE = 0.001, p<.0001). Men reported more leisure-related partner disagreements than women at age 20 (p = 0.002). But men’s reported disagreements decreased over the life course at a faster rate than did women’s reported disagreements (p = 0.03), so that from ages 70-93, men reported less disagreements than women. To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study to explore leisure-related couple disagreements over an extended period of time (20 years). The significance of our results sheds light on the value of longitudinal research on leisure.