When it comes to the tiffs (or the full-blown fights) that
inevitably come up in relationships, it turns out that a woman doesn't need the
man in her life to feel her pain. She just needs to think that he's trying to
feel it.
In a new study from the American Psychological Association,
researchers from Harvard Medical School
and Bryn Mawr College
worked with 156 heterosexual couples who had been together for an average of
three and a half years. The point was to examine how important your significant
other's 'perceived empathetic effort' -- the degree to which he or she seems to
be at least attempting to understand why you're feeling a certain way -- is to
you if you're a woman or a man.
"It could be that for women, seeing that their male
partner is upset reflects some degree of the man's investment and emotional
engagement in the relationship, even during difficult times. This is consistent
with what is known about the dissatisfaction women often experience when their
male partner becomes emotionally withdrawn and disengaged in response to
conflict," said the study's lead author, Shiri Cohen, PhD, of Harvard Medical School .
Researchers recruited 156 heterosexual couples for the
experiment. Of those, 102 came from the Boston
area and were younger, urban, ethnically and economically diverse and in a
committed but not necessarily married relationship. In an effort to find
couples who varied in the ways they resolved conflicts and controlled their
emotions, they also looked for couples with a history of domestic violence
and/or childhood sexual abuse. The remaining participants, from Bryn Mawr , Pa. ,
were older, suburban and middle-class married couples with strong ties to the
community. In all, 71 percent of couples were white, 56 percent were married
and their average length of relationship was three-and-a-half years.
Each participant was asked to describe an incident with his
or her partner over the past couple of months that was particularly
frustrating, disappointing or upsetting. The researchers' audio recorded the
participant making a one- to two-sentence statement summarizing the incident
and reaction and then brought the couples together and played each
participant's statements. The couples were told to try to come to a better
understanding together of what had happened and were given approximately 10
minutes to discuss it while the researchers videotaped them. Following the
discussions, the participants viewed the videotape and simultaneously rated
their negative and positive emotions throughout, using an electronic rating
device. The device had a knob that moved across an 11-point scale that ranged
from "very negative" to "neutral" to "very positive."
Using these ratings, the researchers selected six 30-second
clips from the videotape that had the highest rated negative or positive
emotions by each partner. The researchers showed the clips to the participants
and had them complete questionnaires about their feelings during each segment
as well as their perceptions of their partner's feelings and effort to
understand them during the discussion. They also measured the participants'
overall satisfaction with their relationships and whether each partner
considered his or her partner's efforts to be empathetic.
Relationship satisfaction was directly related to men's
ability to read their female partner's positive emotions correctly. However,
contrary to the researchers' expectations, women who correctly understood that
their partners were upset during the videotaped incident were much more likely
to be satisfied with their relationship than if they correctly understood that
their partner was happy. Also, when men understood that their female partner
was angry or upset, the women reported being happier, though the men were not.
The authors suggest that being empathetic to a partner's negative emotions may
feel threatening to the relationship for men but not for women.
The findings also show that the more men and women try to be
empathetic to their partner's feelings, the happier they are. The authors
suggest that this research should encourage couples to better appreciate and
communicate one another's efforts to be empathetic.
The American Psychological Association, in Washington ,
D.C. , is the largest scientific and
professional organization representing psychology in the United States
and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership
includes more than 154,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and
students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations
with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to
advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting
health, education and human welfare.
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