Providing partner support in good times and bad: Providers’ outcomes

Abstract

Past work has often examined outcomes associated with receiving support for the support recipient, but less work has focused on the impact that providing support has on the support provider. In this study, we examined the impact of providing responsive support (i.e. support that communicates understanding, validation, and caring) on the support provider. In a 10-day daily experience study, 78 romantic partners (39 couples) reported once a day on their responses to their partners’ positive and negative event disclosures. Specifically, participants reported on whether their partner talked about an event and the intended responsiveness of their response, and completed several daily personal and relationship well-being measures (relationship satisfaction, life satisfaction, vitality, and anxiety). Analyses revealed that providing responsive support for positive event disclosures was associated with benefits for the support provider, including higher daily relationship and life satisfaction, and vitality. In contrast, providing responsive support for negative event disclosures was associated with lower levels of daily well-being (less relationship satisfaction, greater anxiety). However, being someone who typically provides responsive support for negative events was still optimal over the course of the study. Results are discussed in terms of the immediate and longer-term differences between being responsive to positive event disclosures (i.e. capitalization) and negative event disclosures (i.e. traditional social support).