Communicated Perspective-Taking During Stories of Marital Stress: Spouses' Perceptions of One Another's Perspective-Taking Behaviors

• Published in: The Southern communication journal Vol. 78; no. 4; pp. 326 - 351
• Main Authors: Koenig Kellas, Jody, Willer, Erin K., Trees, April R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Memphis Taylor & Francis Group 01-09-2013; Southern States Communication Association
• Subjects: Behavior; Communication; Coordination; Couples; Judgments; Personal relationships; Spouses; Stress; Tone
• ISSN: 1041-794X; 1930-3203
• DOI: 10.1080/1041794X.2013.815264

Perspective-taking has important connections to social and relational functioning, making it an important skill for marital adjustment (Long & Andrews,
1990
). The current study investigated the types of behaviors indicative of communicated perspective-taking from the participant perspective as couples told stories of stressful relational events. Using a stimulated recall procedure, 68 husband and wife pairs jointly told the story of a stressful relational experience and then separately viewed their videotaped interaction and evaluated their spouses' perspective-taking behaviors. Agreement, attentiveness, relevant contributions, coordination, positive tone, and freedom represented the categories of behaviors spouses judged to reflect perspective-taking. In contrast, disagreement, inattentiveness, irrelevant contributions, lack of coordination, negative tone, and constraint all emerged as categories of behaviors lacking in perspective-taking. Findings also indicated that disagreement, attentiveness, inattentiveness, negative tone, coordination, lack of coordination, and constraint were significantly related to general judgments of perspective-taking for husbands. For wives, on the other hand, disagreement, inattentiveness, irrelevant contributions, and constraint were the only significant negative correlates of general perspective-taking judgments.