For Better or Worse: Associations Among Psychopathology Symptoms, Interpersonal Emotion Dynamics, and Gender in Couples

Communication has long been associated with the well-being of a couple's relationship, and it is also important to explore associations with individual well-being. This study examined the associations between emotions communicated within couple interactions and each partner's psychopathology symptoms concurrently and up to 3 years later. Vocally-encoded emotional arousal (f (0)) was measured during couples' (N = 56) conversations. Analyses examined each partner's trajectories of f (0) and how each partner influenced the other's f (0) across the conversation. The findings indicated that women experienced higher symptoms if they (a) decreased more steeply in f (0) overall and (b) returned to their baseline in f (0) more quickly. Moreover, women had higher symptoms if they had a steeper return to baseline because of men's elevated f (0). In contrast, men experienced higher symptoms when men (a) more slowly returned to baseline and (b) changed their f (0) trajectory because of women's elevated f (0). That is, women who expressed less emotional arousal, independently and as a result of the influence of their male partner, experienced more symptoms. In contrast, men's symptoms were differentially associated with their own independent experience of emotional arousal (in which he experienced fewer symptoms when changing arousal more quickly) from how they responded to women's arousal. Given how differently men's and women's psychopathology were associated with emotional expression, these findings raise questions about how partners can communicate to protect their own and their partner's mental health in the short- and long-term.