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Spinning Your Wheels: Psychological Overinvolvement and Actigraphy-Assessed Sleep Efficiency Following Marital Separation

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Abstract

Background

This study investigated the ways in which adults reflect on their psychological experiences amid a recent marital separation and how these patterns of thought, manifest in language, are associated with self-reported negative affect and actigraphy-assessed sleep disturbance.

Methods

In a sample of 138 recently separated adults assessed three times over five months, we examined within- and between-person associations among psychological overinvolvement (operationalized using verbal immediacy derived as a function of the language participants used to discuss their relationship history and divorce experience), continued attachment to an ex-partner, negative affect, and sleep efficiency.

Results

The association between psychological overinvolvement and negative affect operated at the within-person level, whereas the associations between psychological overinvolvement and sleep disturbance, as well as negative affect and sleep disturbance, operated at the between-person level.

Conclusions

These findings shed light on the intraindividual processes that may explain why some people are more susceptible to poor outcomes after separation/divorce than others. Our findings suggest that individuals who express their divorce-related thoughts and feelings in a psychologically overinvolved manner may be at greatest risk for sleep disturbances after marital separation/divorce.

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Notes

  1. ICC of negative affect = .56; ICC of sleep efficiency = .71.

  2. The 2nd and 4th visit procedures consisted only of mailed self-report measures, which were returned by mail or collected by research assistants; these data were not used in the current study.

  3. We conceptualized our theoretical model as mediational associations; however, for each study occasion (i.e., 1st, 3rd, 5th visit), verbal immediacy and we-talk were collected during the study visit, but negative affect and sleep efficiency were composites of data collected on the seven days/nights following the study visit. Thus, negative affect and sleep efficiency were collected simultaneously with no temporal precedence established.

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Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD069498). L. O’Hara’s work on this paper was supported by a Career Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (K01MH120321).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, REACH Institute, Arizona State University, 900 S, McAllister Ave, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Karey L. O’Hara

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

    Matthias R. Mehl & David A. Sbarra

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  1. Karey L. O’Hara
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  2. Matthias R. Mehl
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  3. David A. Sbarra
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Contributions

KLO and DAS developed the paper concept. KLO performed the analyses with input from DAS. KLO and DAS drafted the manuscript. MRM provided critical revisions. MRM organized and provided critical oversight of all EAR data collection and coding. DAS and MRM designed the study. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Karey L. O’Hara.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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A preregistration of the analytic plan as well as supplementary material and all data and materials used for the present report are publicly available via the Open Science Framework and can be accessed at osf.io/g9w5x.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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O’Hara, K.L., Mehl, M.R. & Sbarra, D.A. Spinning Your Wheels: Psychological Overinvolvement and Actigraphy-Assessed Sleep Efficiency Following Marital Separation. Int.J. Behav. Med. 30, 307–319 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-022-10101-w

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