Daily Spousal Responsiveness Predicts Longer-Term Trajectories of Patients’ Physical Function

Abstract

Everyday interpersonal experiences may underlie the well-established link between close relationships and physical health, but multitemporal designs necessary for strong conclusions about temporal sequence are rare. The current study of 145 knee osteoarthritis patients and their spouses focused on a novel pattern in everyday interactions, daily spouse responsiveness—the degree to which spouse responses are calibrated to changes in patients’ everyday verbal pain expression. Using couple-level slopes, multilevel latent-variable growth models tested associations between three types of daily spouse responsiveness (empathic, solicitous, and punishing), as measured during a 3-week experience-sampling study, and change in patient physical function across 18 months. As predicted, patients whose spouses were more empathically responsive to their pain expression showed better physical function over time compared to those whose spouses were less empathically responsive. This study points to daily responsiveness, a theoretically rooted operationalization of spouse sensitivity, as important for long-term changes in objective physical function.

Self-Disclosure and Perceived Responsiveness Among Youth With Asthma: Links to Affect and Anti-Inflammatory Gene Expression

“…Perceived responsiveness is also associated with various health benefits, from better sleep quality (Selcuk, Stanton, Slatcher & Ong, 2017;Troxel, 2010), to reduced experiences of pain (Wilson, Martire, & Sliwinski, 2017), and lower risk of mortality (Selcuk & Ong, 2013).…”

Why We Never Eat Alone: The Overlooked Role of Microbes and Partners in Obesity Debates in Bioethics

“…But it is also worth noting that this dyad-as-unit strategy has shown promise in other relationship contexts, such as family-based interventions for obesity and parent-child dyads (e.g., Boutelle et al 2017;Best et al 2016;Loveman et al 2015). Similar dyad-level effects have also been observed in other related domains, including diabetes and blood glucose monitoring (Anderson et al 1997;Berg et al 2013), sleep apnea (Baron et al 2011), arthritis (Hemphill et al 2016), and pain management (Wilson, Martire, and Sliwinski 2017). Moreover, our account provides novel resources in support of an emerging trend in the bioethics literature which acknowledges the social character of eating (e.g., Kukla 2018;Stohr 2018).…”

Bioethics and the Hypothesis of Extended Health

“…This conceptualization can help to reveal new pathways of influence, and hence, new intervention strategies (e.g., targeting the intake of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods in the parent as a way to reduce intake in the child). Indeed, there is evidence that treating dyads (again, as opposed to the individuals therein) as a dynamic functional unit yields therapeutic benefits across a number of health-relevant domains including diabetes and blood glucose monitoring (Anderson et al 1997;Berg et al, 2013), sleep apnea (Baron et al, 2011), arthritis (Hemphill et al 2016), pain management (Wilson et al, 2017), and aging (Rauers, Riediger, Schmiedek, & Lindenberger, 2011). 12 Crucially, we are able to claim that health and disease can extend to include symbiont microbes, parents, or spouses without sliding into the claim that health must also extend to include the advertising industry, cultures of consumption, oppressive economic practices, etc.…”