Emotion Regulation and Romantic Partners’ Relationship Satisfaction: Self-Reports and Partner Reports

Abstract

Studies investigating the effects of emotion regulation on romantic partners’ relationship satisfaction (RS) found that proneness to use cognitive reappraisal exerts positive, whereas expressive suppression negative effects on both one’s own and partner’s satisfaction. However, no studies explored the effects of partner reported use of the two emotion regulation strategies on RS, which might allow the exclusion of method-related explanations of the previous findings and offer new insights into the mechanisms involved. We tested the hypotheses about the effects of reappraisal and suppression on RS on a sample of 205 romantic couples by using round-robin design and actorpartner interdependence modelling (APIM). Although the effects were relatively small, they were still in line with the assumptions that cognitive reappraisal has positive intra- and interpersonal effects on RS, that they can be generalized across self- and partner reports to a certain extent, and that they are somewhat stronger in women. Considering expressive suppression, only women’s selfreported suppression exerted significant negative intrapersonal effect on RS. Implications of selfand partner reports of emotion regulation for the understanding of the mechanisms mediating its effects on RS are discussed.

Keywords

• emotion regulation; relationship satisfaction; actor-partner interdependence model (APIM); partner reports