Social exchange processes and their association with couples’ health regulation and health-related outcomes

Abstract

Aims: Our goal is to go beyond the well-researched notion of perceived available social support as a health correlate by emphasizing the role of more immediate accounts of social exchange processes in intimate relationships, including actually provided social support, emotional sharing, invisible and provided social control, and dyadic planning as health-regulating processes. In our studies, we account for both partners’ perspectives within dyads. Our aim is to shed light on reciprocal social exchange processes that go on in intimate relationships and that may play an important role for partners’ health behaviours and affect under stress. Rationale: Investigating immediate social exchange processes in intimate relationships is of high importance for adults’ health promotion as the majority of adults are living in stable relationships and partners are often highly involved in each other’s health practices. To date, only few studies accounted for both partners’ actions to co-regulate each other’s health. In our symposium, we will elaborate couples’ exchange processes and their relation to health determinants (e.g. health behaviours, affect) to provide implications for health practitioners and future research in this field. Summary: First, Corina Berli presents findings on how partners relate to each other’s daily physical activity and positive affect through social support provision. Second, Antje Rauers reports on both partners’ emotional sharing and its association with negative affect after stress-related events. Third, Janina Lüscher shows results on the role of invisible social control for affect regulation and smoking behaviour among dual-smoker couples. Within the context of enhancing daily physical activity, Diana Hilda Hohl presents how social control is associated with both partners’ physical activity-related self-efficacy. Subsequently, Jan Keller compares associations of physical activity with plan specificity between an individual and a dyadic planning intervention group. Finally, Gertraud Stadler will discuss implications of the presented papers.