Compassion is an inherently interpersonal emotion that motivates caretaking behavior. Yet, couples' expressions of compassion have been largely overlooked by researchers. We capitalized on a unique archive of naturalistic recordings to assess the frequency with which married couples (N = 30) verbally expressed compassion to one another in daily life and tested associations with partners' ratings of marital quality, depression, and neuroticism. A keyword search of hundreds of hours of recordings flagged potential expressions; human coders examined the interpersonal context in each instance to identify the cases that were actual expressions of compassion. The data showed that verbal expressions of compassion were common: Couples were observed offering compassion on average twice per hour. Actor-partner interdependence models (APIMs) tested how the rate at which compassion was expressed to a spouse was linked to the partners' reports of marital quality, depression, and neuroticism. There was evidence for a hypothesized partner effect: husbands offered more compassion to wives who reported more depressive symptoms. An unexpected pattern emerged indicating that husbands' personal distress was associated with more frequent compassion expressions. In particular, husbands who perceived their marriages as lower quality and husbands who reported more neuroticism offered more compassion. Our findings highlight the distinction between the internal emotional experience versus verbal expressions of compassion and suggest that some partner compassion behaviors may reflect hypervigilance and compulsive caretaking triggered by distress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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“亲爱的，你还好吗？”：婚姻质量和心理健康与夫妻的同情心相关。

同情心是一种内在的人际情感，会激发照顾行为。然而，研究人员很大程度上忽视了夫妻表达同情心的情况。我们利用独特的自然记录档案来评估已婚夫妇 (N = 30) 在日常生活中口头表达同情心的频率，并测试了与伴侣的婚姻质量、抑郁和神经质评级之间的关联。对数百小时录音进行关键词搜索，标记出潜在的表达方式；人类编码人员检查了每个实例中的人际环境，以确定哪些案例是实际表达同情心的。数据显示，口头表达同情心很常见：据观察，夫妻平均每小时表达两次同情心。演员-伴侣相互依赖模型（APIM）测试了对配偶表达同情的比率与伴侣的婚姻质量、抑郁和神经质的报告之间的关系。有证据表明假设的伴侣效应：丈夫对报告更多抑郁症状的妻子表现出更多的同情心。出现了一种意想不到的模式，表明丈夫的个人痛苦与更频繁的同情表达有关。特别是，那些认为自己的婚姻质量较低的丈夫和那些表现出更多神经质的丈夫会表现出更多的同情心。我们的研究结果强调了内部情感体验与口头表达同情心之间的区别，并表明一些伴侣的同情心行为可能反映了由痛苦引发的过度警惕和强迫性照顾。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。