In each ‘Research Spotlight’ feature, I provide a plain-English summary of an interesting research paper, INCLUDING a statement about its relevance to YOU. I hope this feature is of help to you, whether it inspires you to pick up and read one of these papers in its entirety, or just helps you feel a bit more confident and competent on one of those TL;DR days.
Today’s paper is…
If you sang that headline when you read it, you know the deliciousness of Chicago’s 1982 Power Ballad, ‘Hard to Say I’m Sorry.’ Today’s Research Spotlight picks up on a similar theme: How do we support couples to step out of escalating conflict and slow down together?
This experimental paper explores the role of negative emotions in driving aggression during couples’ conflicts, with a specific focus on the effectiveness of brief forced breaks as an intervention.
The study offers significant insights into how managing emotional states through structured pauses can influence conflict dynamics.
Key Points of the Study:
1. Research Objective:
The study investigates how negative emotions from both partners contribute to aggression during conflicts and examines the impact of brief forced breaks on reducing such aggression.
2. Study Design:
- Participants engaged in a competitive reaction time task, while their emotional responses and aggressive behaviours were observed and measured.
- The task was clever: after competing on a simple reaction time game (who could hit the button fastest when the screen said “Go”?) the ‘winner’ of each trial got to ‘blast’ the loser with an aversive loud noise through their headphones.
- The winner chose their blast volume either immediately or after a 5, 10 or 15 second forced pause.
- The time to selection, blast volume and facial expressions of winner and loser were recorded for each trial.
3. Findings:
- The study found that negative emotions from both partners significantly drive aggression. When both partners exhibited high levels of negative emotion (measured by coding their facial expressions), aggression increased (they chose higher blast volumes) i.e., it’s a vicious cycle – partners heighten each other!
- Introducing forced temporal breaks during conflicts led to a reduction in aggression and overall conflict intensity (i.e., the longer participants were forced to wait, the less loudly they ‘blasted’ their partner).
- Notably, participants who utilized additional or extended breaks (i.e., waited longer than required to choose their volume level) experienced further reductions in aggression and conflict. This suggests that allowing more time for emotional regulation and reflection can enhance the effectiveness of the intervention.
4. Implications for Conflict Resolution:
- The research highlights the value of structured breaks in managing conflicts. By incorporating pauses during heated discussions or stressful tasks, partners can better regulate their emotions and decrease aggression.
- The study emphasizes the importance of allowing time for emotional cooling and processing, which can lead to more constructive conflict resolution and reduced overall conflict.
5. Implications for Emotionally Focused Couples Therapists:
- For Emotionally Focused Couples Therapists (EFT therapists), the study reinforces the utility of integrating structured breaks into therapy sessions; and encouraging partners to introduce these breaks at home, especially at the outset of therapy when conflict is still high. Given that both partners’ negative emotions contribute to aggression, providing intentional pauses during conflicts can be a practical tool for reducing emotional intensity and fostering more productive discussions.
- EFT therapists can incorporate strategies to help couples implement these breaks effectively, guiding them on how to use these pauses to de-escalate and reflect before re-engaging in conflict resolution (NOTE the commitment to re-engage is AS IMPORTANT as the pause! Otherwise, a break just becomes another form of emotional avoidance).
- The research supports the EFT focus on creating a safe space for emotional expression while also providing practical techniques for managing high-emotion situations. By helping couples use breaks to manage their emotional states, therapists can facilitate better communication and reduce conflict aggression.
6. Conclusion:
- The study highlights that negative emotions from both partners drive aggression during conflicts and that forced temporal breaks can significantly reduce aggression and conflict intensity. Effective conflict resolution strategies should incorporate mechanisms for emotional regulation, such as structured pauses, to improve relational dynamics.
- This is CO-REGULATION before COURSE CORRECTION. How wonderful to have an experimental study that shows this working so elegantly.
- I’ve said many times that my absolute favourite quote of Dr Sue Johnson’s is “Go slower to go further.” This study illustrates it beautifully.
I hope this is of help and encouragement to you in your relationship therapy practice, or even in supporting individual clients to manage interpersonal conflict adaptively: Go slower to go further, and please do and let me know if this was of help to you.
