The Role of Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Spouses' Support Interactions: An Observational Study

Abstract

The present study examined how support providers’ empathic dispositions (dispositional perspective taking, empathic concern, and personal distress) as well as their situational empathic reactions (interaction-based perspective taking, empathic concern, and personal distress) relate to the provision of spousal support during observed support interactions. Forty-five committed couples provided questionnaire data and participated in two ten-minute social support interactions designed to assess behaviors when partners are offering and soliciting social support. A video-review task was used to assess situational forms of perspective taking (e.g., empathic accuracy), empathic concern and personal distress. Data were analyzed by means of the multi-level Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. Results revealed that providers scoring higher on affective empathy (i.e., dispositional empathic concern), provided lower levels of negative support. In addition, for male partners, scoring higher on cognitive empathy (i.e., situational perspective taking) was related to lower levels of negative support provision. For both partners, higher scores on cognitive empathy (i.e., situational perspective taking) correlated with more instrumental support provision. Male providers scoring higher on affective empathy (i.e., situational personal distress) provided higher levels of instrumental support. Dispositional perspective taking was related to higher scores on emotional support provision for male providers. The current study furthers our insight into the empathy-support link, by revealing differential effects (a) for men and women, (b) of both cognitive and affective empathy, and (c) of dispositional as well as situational empathy, on different types of support provision.

Role of clarity of other's feelings for dyadic coping

“…These results support the theoretical assumption that understanding one's partner's feelings is an important prerequisite for dyadic coping (Bodenmann, ). Men's CoF did predict the long‐term development of their own supportive dyadic coping as perceived by their female partners, which is a similar effect that previous studies have shown in cross‐sectional data (e.g., Verhofstadt et al, ). Moreover, men's CoF did also predict long‐term intrapersonal changes of their female partner's supportive dyadic coping.…”

“…Second, we expected that interpersonal differences in CoF prospectively predict intrapersonal changes in supportive dyadic coping as perceived by the other partner such that individuals with higher CoF are better able to maintain high levels of supportive dyadic coping in the long run. Given that empirical evidence on gender differences in the association of CoF and supportive behaviors in couples is sparse and mixed (e.g., Levesque et al, ; Verhofstadt et al, ), we did not have any specific expectations regarding gender effects in this study.…”

“…Recent studies examining closely related constructs provide the first evidence for the theoretically proposed link between CoF and provision of supportive dyadic coping. They show that sympathizing with other people's feelings (i.e., empathic concern) and the dispositional behavioral tendency to adopt the other person's perspective (i.e., perspective taking) are positively associated with support provision (Levesque, Lafontaine, Caron, Flesch, & Bjornson, ; Verhofstadt et al, ). Moreover, accurately understanding one's partners feelings in a specific conversation goes along with better support provision within the same conversation (Howland, ; Verhofstadt et al, ; Verhofstadt, Buysse, Ickes, Davis, & Devoldre, ), and accurately understanding one's partners feelings on a given day is associated with better support provision on that day (Howland, ).…”

The manageability of empathic (in)accuracy during couples’ conflict: Relationship-protection or self-protection?

“…Previous work on social support (Verhofstadt, Buysse, Ickes, Davis, & Devoldre, 2008;Verhofstadt et al, 2016) has found that empathic accuracy is predictive of better support provision as individuals who are more able to recognize their partner's needs can provide more welcome support to their partner in distress.…”

“…Immediately after the post-interaction task both partners individually completed a video-review task similar to that used in other studies (e.g., Ickes, Stinson, Bissonnette, & Garcia, 1990;Verhofstadt et al, 2016). The partners were separated and asked to re-experience and re-live their interaction while they viewed a video of it on a laptop.…”