Just in time to attend Valentine’s Day, new research explores how couples become more synchronous when fighting

The way romantic partners communicate with each other can influence the quality and satisfaction of the couple’s relationship and their personal happiness and mental health.

New research from Metropolitan University of Toronto explores how couples deal with conflict and how they affect the quality of their relationship. The findings of the study can help romantic partners improve their fighting style.

“The main focus of couple therapy is to learn skills to communicate more effectively about conflict,” said lead researcher Professor Sarah S. Dermody. “These findings help emphasize the importance of maintaining support and positive behavior when discussing conflicts in relationships.” .”

This study applies time-varying effect models to existing data in large-scale experimental studies of couples. The researchers used this model to study the development of positive and negative partner behaviors throughout the interaction and how these behaviors affect partner responses. Positive behaviors may be supportive or problem-solving orientations, while negative behaviors may be crucial or hostile.

“The process of discussing and navigating conflict is important, not just whether they reach a resolution,” said Professor Dermody. “Our ability to fully understand the multifaceted communication between couples when discussing conflicts is limited by the available research tools. This study demonstrates a new approach to using data and helps characterize how conflicts develop.”

Researchers found that one person’s positive behavior tends to elicit positive reactions from another person. At the same time, negative behavior is closely related to negative reactions. The researchers also found that couples became more synchronized over time when discussing conflicts. This is especially true when couples rely on more positive ways of interacting.

The results of the study show that couples usually reflect the type of behavior they respond to during combat. They also highlight the importance of maintaining support and positive behavior when fighting a romantic partner.

The study also examines how alcohol consumption interacts with these dynamic moments. Surprisingly, the consumption of alcohol by one or both partners did not produce statistically significant changes in the way the partners interacted. However, the researchers suspected that if participants consumed more alcohol than the ones provided by the study, or the couple were unaware that they were observing their alcohol changes.

Time-varying relationship dynamics of conflicting couples are published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.