Couples' Tone and Communication Use during Everyday Relationship Distress: Links with Dating Aggression
Department
Psychology
Faculty Advisor
Adela C. Timmons
Start Date
30-9-2020 1:00 PM
End Date
30-9-2020 2:00 PM
Abstract
The quality of our relationships is an important factor impacting our overall psychological health and well-being (Bolger, Delongis, Kessler, and Schilling, 1989). The way we communicate with our romantic partners, including what we say and how we say it, could affect the quality of our relationships (Baucom et.al., 2012; Simmons, Gordon, and Chambless, 2005). The purpose of this study is to examine the association between tone, communication, and relationship distress in romantic couples’ everyday lives. For tone, we hypothesize that (1) moments of everyday relationship distress will be associated with hostile/irritated and serious tones. For communication, we hypothesize that (2) moments of everyday relationship distress will be associated with negative communication, such as conflict, insulting/criticizing/blaming, and defending. Lastly, we hypothesize that (3) the association between everyday relationship distress and negative tones/negative communication will be greater among couples with higher dating aggression. Across an entire day, from 10:00am until bedtime, 74 young adult couples were given smartphones to complete surveys each hour to record their relationship distress level. Everyday relationship distress was measured by couples rating their annoyance levels toward their partner on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 100 (extremely annoyed) each hour using the smartphone. Phones also recorded 3 minutes of audio every 12 minutes. We listened to the audio recordings and coded for tone and communication type during a 3-hour period in which conflict was reported by the partners. We will conduct multilevel regression analysis to test the association between tone, communication, everyday relationship distress, and dating aggression. Findings will inform whether aggressive couples show unique patterns of communication during relationship distress. Our data are unique in that couples’ behavior was captured in real-life settings, rather than laboratory settings. These data will provide information that will aid in the design of interventions to improve couples' functioning.
File Type
Event
Couples' Tone and Communication Use during Everyday Relationship Distress: Links with Dating Aggression
The quality of our relationships is an important factor impacting our overall psychological health and well-being (Bolger, Delongis, Kessler, and Schilling, 1989). The way we communicate with our romantic partners, including what we say and how we say it, could affect the quality of our relationships (Baucom et.al., 2012; Simmons, Gordon, and Chambless, 2005). The purpose of this study is to examine the association between tone, communication, and relationship distress in romantic couples’ everyday lives. For tone, we hypothesize that (1) moments of everyday relationship distress will be associated with hostile/irritated and serious tones. For communication, we hypothesize that (2) moments of everyday relationship distress will be associated with negative communication, such as conflict, insulting/criticizing/blaming, and defending. Lastly, we hypothesize that (3) the association between everyday relationship distress and negative tones/negative communication will be greater among couples with higher dating aggression. Across an entire day, from 10:00am until bedtime, 74 young adult couples were given smartphones to complete surveys each hour to record their relationship distress level. Everyday relationship distress was measured by couples rating their annoyance levels toward their partner on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 100 (extremely annoyed) each hour using the smartphone. Phones also recorded 3 minutes of audio every 12 minutes. We listened to the audio recordings and coded for tone and communication type during a 3-hour period in which conflict was reported by the partners. We will conduct multilevel regression analysis to test the association between tone, communication, everyday relationship distress, and dating aggression. Findings will inform whether aggressive couples show unique patterns of communication during relationship distress. Our data are unique in that couples’ behavior was captured in real-life settings, rather than laboratory settings. These data will provide information that will aid in the design of interventions to improve couples' functioning.