When Couples Disagree: Predicting Informant Differences in Adults’ Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Objectives Investigations of emotion regulation, which includes both subjective affect and observable behaviors, could benefit from widespread adoption of multi-informant approaches. Currently, informants are infrequently used when studying adults, due to the complexity of interpreting differences among multiple reports.Method To identify factors that predict disagreement between informants, this study evaluated self-reported and partnerr-eported emotion regulation abilities for each member of 81 adult couples. Ratings of each partner's perceived stress, symptoms of psychopathology, couple satisfaction, and intimate partner victimization were collected as potential sources of discordance. ResultsIntrapersonal characteristics appeared to contribute most to diverging reports: women and men experiencing higher stress (and marginally their psychopathology) reported worse emotion regulation abilities in comparison to their partners' ratings of their abilities, underscoring the value of having multiple reports. Additionally, women's reports about their partners corresponded with their partners' self-reports but men's reports about their partners did not. Men with higher couple satisfaction reported better emotion regulation abilities compared to their partner's reports.Conclusions More work is needed to understand multi-informant differences in adult reports of psychological functioning.

Factors Distinguishing Reciprocal Versus Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence Across Time and Reporter

“…Although the current study benefits from its multi-informant approach, this study remains limited by its reliance on self-reports and the absence of indirect assessment of several variables, such as couple functioning, substance use, empathy, emotion regulation, and coping abilities-all of which may be subject to misrepresentation. Even when multiple informants are used to assess such variables, intrapersonal factors contribute to discrepancies in partners' perspectives (as seen for partner reports on emotion regulation; Pu et al, 2019). In multi-informant studies, several sources of self-report biases remain, including attention, selective recall, and social desirability (Möricke et al, 2016).…”

Testosterone Associations With Parents’ Child Abuse Risk and At-Risk Parenting: A Multimethod Longitudinal Examination

“…Further, although perceived stress may be appropriate to assess via self-report, estimating one’s emotion regulation abilities could be biased in self-reports. Other than perhaps pursuing multi-informant reports of emotion regulation ability (Pu et al, 2019; Rodriguez, Tucker et al, 2016), analog approaches to assessing emotion regulation are also worth considering in relation to testosterone levels as well as potential experimental paradigms that induce stress that may interact with testosterone levels.…”