Stefie Gan
The Couples Lab
exploring the effects of stress on relationships
PrintThe notion that married couples are happier, wealthier, and live longer than others has long fallen on the ears of frustrated singles everywhere. These aforementioned singles will be dismayed to note that this idea isn’t a propagandist scheme concocted by the capitalists behind match.com; psychological studies indicate that people in long-term, intimate relationships actually do exhibit better health than the rest of the population.
What are the underlying causes for that sustained health and satisfaction? What concrete behaviors in relationships contribute to this outcome? Studies done on these subjects haven’t been conclusive, as the evidence is scattered and reproducing the nature of social relationships can be methodologically difficult in the laboratory. Still, the psychological researchers at Columbia’s Couples’ Lab are invested in further exploring these very questions. The director of the lab, Professor Niall Bolger, inaugurated the first Couple’s Lab at New York University 10 years ago with his colleague, Professor Patrick Shrout. Upon Bolger’s arrival at Columbia four years ago, he established a correlate program here that often collaborates with the NYU project.
“Most people think of psychology as the study of individual, referring to processes that go on inside the head,” Bolger explains, “But if you think about it, the smallest social unit is the dyad. I like [the study of couples] because it’s social, but it’s also psychological because we’re interested in what these couples are thinking and feeling.”
One particular aspect of dyadic relationships that the lab endeavors to study is the way in which couples deal with stress and offer support. It’s difficult—and ethically questionable—to reproduce certain social conditions in laboratories, but these researchers have come up with creative methods in order to analyze similar processes without violating medical code. In a study conducted in concert with the NYU lab, psychologists examined couples’ responses to a specific, scheduled event: the bar exam. For several months while one individual in the couple was preparing for the exam, both filled out daily diaries or questionnaires regarding their mood, stress level, how supported they felt by their partner, and how much they thought they were supporting their partner.
Another study, conducted by Christine Paprocki, has a similar diary design but also incorporates videotaped discussion. After speaking with their partners about a personal problem (such as losing weight, getting a job, etc.), study participants watched the videos and responded to questions pertaining to their mood, and sense of feeling supported.
While not all of the results of these studies have been analyzed and published, Bolger, Paprocki, and Gertrude Stadler, a postdoc working with the lab, shared some of their more interesting observations. Surprisingly, many stressed members of the couples reported feeling best on days when they didn’t report receipt of support at all. Although the other partner may have reported providing support, the recipient didn’t interpret the events or behaviors of the day as out of the ordinary. This sort of “invisible support” came in a variety of forms, and could even be as simple as spending time together taking a walk or watching television. While individuals certainly exhibit a variety of responses to particular behaviors, researchers often found that instructed support, in which providers of support made obvious their attempts to comfort the stressed member of the dyad, were often less successful, possibly because they highlighted the already troubling fact that something was amiss.
In order to be able to offer skilled support, couples must be adept at reading each other, which is why researchers at the Couple’s Lab also examine empathy. According to Bolger, empathy is the critical link in effective social support interactions. Jamil Zaki, a graduate student who works with Professors Bolger and Ochsner, is particularly interested in this field of study. He recently published a joint paper with them exploring the relationship between the ability to share an emotion to the ability to empathize with it. The study suggests that the capacity for empathy is fundamentally interpersonal – in other words, insight into the sources of a person’s conditions (which might be clear in close relationships) is integral to empathic accuracy.
In the future, the lab hopes to fund projects examining the importance of social networks in sustaining health interventions. Bolger argues that it’s important to continue approaching these subjects through a multidisciplinary, nuanced lens incorporating both the sociological and the psychological. “Close friends, partners: these intimate relationships are the fundamental parts of people’s lives, ” he says. “What’s going on in these relationships has an impact on health and well being.”
9 April 2009
vol. 6, issue 9
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