Abstract
The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between spouse marital satisfaction and spouse solicitousness to their physiological responsiveness during marital interactions about pain. Twenty-six couples engaged in a series of structured marital interactions about neutral and pain-related topics while monitored for skin conductance (SC) and heart rate (HR). There was strong support for the role of spouses’ marital satisfaction in predicting their physiological responsiveness. The more satisfied a spouse, the more physiologically reactive the spouses were when listening to the patient describe pain, and the less reactive when responding to it. Dissatisfied spouses demonstrated the opposite pattern. They autonomically deactivated when hearing about the pain and became reactive when responding to it. Solicitousness was not a significant predictor of the spouses’ physiological responsiveness. Block’s (1981) proposed physiological mechanism for the origin of solicitousness in spouses did not receive support. It appears that responding in any fashion may lessen the magnitude of arousal in maritally satisfied spouses, whereas dealing with pain-related topics produces unpleasant arousal in dissatisfied spouses.
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Stampler, D.B., Wall, J.R., Cassisi, J.E. et al. Marital satisfaction and psychophysiological responsiveness in spouses of patients with chronic pain. Int J Rehab Health 3, 159–170 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02766063
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02766063