Abstract
When would greater empathic accuracy (EA) be an asset and when would it not? In two studies of romantic couples (both employing daily diaries, the second also involving a lab-based video-recall paradigm), we explored the associations between EA (at the day-level, person-level, and in the lab) and an important relationship outcome: negative relationship feelings. Our results show that accuracy is tied more strongly to this relational outcome when negative (vs. positive) moods are the target of empathic judgments. The association between accuracy and (better) feelings was true for both perceivers and targets. Importantly, these associations emerged only in diary-based accuracy scores, and not in the lab-based ones. These results further support the importance of everyday empathic accuracy. They also highlight the need to consider such accuracy as multi-faceted, and in particular, to recognize the differential role of attending to our partners’ negative versus positive moods in daily life.
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Notes
Notably, both of these studies departed from the classic video-recall paradigm; Haugen et al. asked both discussants to review the taped conversations and provide close-ended ratings for forty 20-s segments, whereas Cohen et al. solicited particularly upsetting relational events, chose four highly negative and two highly positive 30-s segments, and asked participants to rate their own and their partners’ feelings in these.
We ran a similar set of analyses with positive relationship feelings as the outcome. These can be seen in the Online Supplementary Material (https://osf.io/2fdmj).
As can be seen in online supplementary materials (Tables a1–a5), similar results were obtained with models testing positive RFs as the outcome.
Tables 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 present the results with gender coded 1 = female, 0 = male; this implies that the default estimates in the tables are those for men. For this reason, we do not spell out men’s estimates in the text, unless they are adjusted for covariates and therefore differ from those presented in the tables. We do, however, present women’s estimates.
See footnote 5.
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See footnote 3.
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See footnote 5.
In Study 1, women’s person-level accuracy (regarding both positive and negative moods) had several benefits; in contrast, men’s person-level accuracy proved more of a mixed blessing, at times being associated with poorer relationship outcomes. None of these associations were replicated in Study 2.
See footnote 16.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by internal funding from Barnard College, Columbia University, provided by the first author. This study did not receive external funding. GL is grateful to the Azrieli Foundation for the award of an Azrieli Fellowship supporting his work.
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Rafaeli, E., Gadassi, R., Howland, M. et al. Seeing bad does good: Relational benefits of accuracy regarding partners’ negative moods. Motiv Emot 41, 353–369 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-017-9614-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-017-9614-x