According to a recent study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, people are more prone to focus on their love partner’s bad behaviours than their good behaviours when they are under stress.
Stressful life events can have an impact on how couples communicate as well as their individual actions, according to earlier studies. But according to this study, stress may also have an impact on what people initially detect, such as their partner’s annoyance, impatience, or criticism.
The lead study author, Lisa Neff, PhD, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a statement: “We found that individuals who reported experiencing more stressful life events outside of their relationship, such as problems at work, were especially likely to notice if their partner behaved inconsiderately.
To learn more about what 79 heterosexual newlywed couples went experiencing, Neff and colleagues conducted a daily diary research. The couples filled out a brief survey every night for ten days, recording both their personal behaviour and that of their spouse. They also answered a questionnaire regarding life’s stressful experiences before the trial.
According to the study’s findings, people who recently experienced more stressful life events were more sensitive to the daily variations in their partner’s negative behaviours but not their partner’s positive ones. In comparison to people who experienced fewer stressful events, they also generally believed that their partner was the cause of more bad vibes over the course of the 10 days.
Neff noted that because couples are more prone to concentrate on positive conduct and disregard poor behaviour during the “honeymoon” time of their marriage, studying newlyweds underscores the relevance of the findings.
One approach would be to investigate whether stress’s negative effects can be even more pronounced in relationships that are no longer in the honeymoon stage, the expert suggested. But the fact that we discovered these consequences in a sample of recentlyweds shows just how damaging stress can be.
Importantly, the researchers discovered that couples didn’t appear to focus on their significant other’s negative behaviour after just one stressful day. Instead, a prolonged series of stressful life events frequently led to a change in focus.
“The previous few years have been challenging for many people, and the pandemic’s stress still lingers,” Neff added. The relationship may suffer if stress causes people to pay greater attention to their partner’s less caring actions.
If couples are aware of the effects of stress in their lives, more research could look into whether they can change this habit.
