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Overcoming Barriers to Physical Activity in People with Osteoarthritis: the Role of Empathic Accuracy in Couples’ Planning Discussions

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Abstract

Background

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common chronic joint disease with significant individual and public health consequences. Physical activity can reduce OA symptoms, but patients often fall below recommended levels. Social support from an intimate partner can help them become more active; however, some couples are better than others at enacting effective support. We examined the role of empathic accuracy (EA)—the ability to understand another person’s thoughts and feelings—in couples’ ability to identify strategies for overcoming barriers to increasing activity. We also examined whether EA was associated with changes in affect and with emotion regulation and communication skills.

Method

Forty-two insufficiently physically active participants with OA identified a barrier to becoming more active in a recorded discussion with their partner. Next, both rated self and partner thoughts and feelings during the discussion. Raters coded EA and whether discussions reached a solution. Affect and skills were assessed with validated questionnaires.

Results

An actor-partner interdependence model found higher EA for participants in couples who reached a solution compared to those who did not reach a solution in the allotted time. Both partners’ EA was associated with reduced negative affect in the other member of the couple. Unexpectedly, EA in people with OA was associated with reduced positive affect for their partners. EA was positively associated with one skill: emotional clarity.

Conclusion

Findings from this early-stage study suggest that EA can help couples manage health-related issues together. Emotional clarity emerged as a skill related to EA, suggesting avenues for additional research.

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Notes

  1. We wish to thank an anonymous reviewer of a previous version of the manuscript for suggesting this analysis.

  2. EA was also significantly associated with more pre-discussion negative affect. However, this association appeared only when post-discussion negative affect was included in the analysis and thus seems to be a statistical artifact.

  3. In all participant couples, either both or none of the partners completed a 4-year college, making education a couple-level variable in this sample

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our team of research assistants, including Shelby Rimmler, Julie Upchurch, Cherese Beatty, Beyla Patel, and Ashley Phillips, for their contributions to this study.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Center P60AR064166 awarded to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Thurston Arthritis Research Center (PI: Leigh Callahan) and by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Institutes of Health. The first author is grateful to the Azrieli Foundation for the award of a fellowship supporting his work.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Haran Sened

  2. Division of Public Health, College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Stephanie G. Bahorski

  3. Thurston Arthritis Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Leigh Callahan & Mary Altpeter

  4. Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    Christine Rini

  5. Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Christine Rini

Authors
  1. Haran Sened
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  2. Stephanie G. Bahorski
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  3. Leigh Callahan
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  4. Mary Altpeter
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  5. Christine Rini
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Haran Sened.

Ethics declarations

All procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Sened, H., Bahorski, S.G., Callahan, L. et al. Overcoming Barriers to Physical Activity in People with Osteoarthritis: the Role of Empathic Accuracy in Couples’ Planning Discussions. Int.J. Behav. Med. 27, 235–246 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-020-09856-x

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