Emotion Inhibition and Relationship Satisfaction in the Context of the Communal Coping Model

Abstract

Pain is highly costly in terms of its economic, psychological, and social impact. The biopsychosocial approach to pain serves as a framework to explain aspects of the “pain experience” that cannot be accounted for by purely medical models. Psychological aspects of pain such as maladaptive emotion management styles (e.g., thought suppression and ambivalence over emotional expression), as well as catastrophizing have been linked to poorer pain outcomes, but few studies have examined these factors in an interpersonal context. The Communal Coping Model asserts that within an interpersonal setting, catastrophizing may serve a communicative function to elicit support from one’s partner, but is it unknown how emotion management may impact this association. Therefore, the current study examined the effect of emotion inhibition, catastrophizing, and relationship satisfaction in the context of acute experimental pain. Fifty undergraduate participants at the University of Michigan-Dearborn completed a cold-pressor task in the presence of their partner, as well as several self-report measures. While some expected associations among study variables were not found, analyses revealed that relationship satisfaction moderated the relationship between thought suppression and catastrophizing. Findings from the study offer support for the Communal Coping Model, in that when using a maladaptive coping strategy such as thought suppression, an individual in pain may engage in catastrophizing in an interpersonal context, especially when they feel satisfied with their partner as they may be more likely to believe they would receive support as a result. This study affirms the importance of interpersonal variables in the pain experience and subsequent coping efforts.