Citation

Hinnekens C, Vanhee G, De Schryver M, Ickes W, Verhofstadt LL. Front. Psychol. 2016; 7: e1370.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Frontiers Research Foundation)

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01370

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Our study (Hinnekens et al., 2016) was the first to examine the question of whether intimate partners who are highly motivated to induce change in their partner during conflicts will be more empathically accurate than partners who are less motivated to do so. The results of this study suggested that some forms of demand behavior are indeed associated with the level of empathic accuracy during a conflict interaction, thereby confirming the assumption that perceivers who are motivated to induce changes in their partner or the relationship are also motivated to accurately infer their partner's minds in ways that enable them to exert more influence on their partner and eventually 'push' the partner toward the desired outcome.

The current dataset includes empathic accuracy and demand behavior data from the 310 partners of 155 couples who were observed during conflict interactions. It contributes to existing research by providing data from (a) a large sample of couples, (b) in a committed long-term relationship, and (c) it provides measures of their empathic accuracy for their partner's thoughts and feelings separately. It therefore enables researchers to further explore the associations between empathic accuracy and observed demand behavior, as well as potential moderators of this association (e.g., gender, age, relationship duration, relationship satisfaction).

Language: en