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The interpersonal impact of partner emotion regulation on chronic cardiac patients’ functioning through affect

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Abstract

In this prospective study, we examined whether physical and psychological functioning of patients with a cardiovascular disease is related to their partners’ emotion regulation strategies through both persons’ affect. The final sample consisted of 104 patients (25 women) and their partners. All couples were of the opposite sex and married. Two spouse emotion regulation strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) were assessed at baseline; patient and spouse positive and negative affect was assessed 2 months later; patient functioning were assessed 4 months later. Spouse cognitive reappraisal, but not expressive suppression, was associated with patient functioning in an indirect way, with spouse and patient affect serving as mediators in-sequence. Specifically, spouse cognitive reappraisal was related to spouse affect which was associated with patient affect. In turn, patient affect was related to patient functioning. This adds to our understanding of the dyadic relationships between chronic patients’ and partners’ self-regulation processes and may also guide relevant psychological interventions.

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Funding

This work was supported by the University of Crete Special Account for Research under Grant 4376.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece

    Evangelos C. Karademas & Christoforos Thomadakis

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  1. Evangelos C. Karademas
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Correspondence to Evangelos C. Karademas.

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Evangelos C. Karademas and Christoforos Thomadakis declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures followed were in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Karademas, E.C., Thomadakis, C. The interpersonal impact of partner emotion regulation on chronic cardiac patients’ functioning through affect. J Behav Med 43, 262–270 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-019-00105-5

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