@article{ref1,
title="Childhood maltreatment and context dependent empathic accuracy in adult romantic relationships",
journal="Psychological trauma: theory, research, practice, and policy",
year="2018",
author="Miano, Annemarie and Weber, Teresa and Roepke, Stefan and Dziobek, Isabel",
volume="10",
number="3",
pages="309-318",
abstract="OBJECTIVES: Childhood maltreatment, that is neglect and abuse, are associated with difficulties in adult relationship functioning. We tested whether childhood maltreatment changes the presence of a relationship protective mechanism, called motivated inaccuracy. It describes a decrease in romantic couples' empathic accuracy, (EA), that is, their correct understanding of the partners' thoughts and feelings, in situations that pose a potential threat to the stability of the relationship. With this, couples seem to protect their relationship stability from their partners' potentially destabilizing mental contents. <br><br>METHOD: Romantic couples were videotaped while discussing (a) their favorite film-genre (neutral/positive), (b) their most relevant fear of the past year (personally threatening), and (c) a reason that might lead to a break-up in their relationship (relationship-threatening). EA was measured by the overlap between participants' judgments of their partners' feelings and the partners' self-rated actual feeling, using a continuous video rating of the interactions. Childhood neglect and abuse were retrospectively assessed by a questionnaire. <br><br>RESULTS: Overall, participants decreased their EA for each other in the relationship-threatening versus personally threatening conversation, replicating motivated inaccuracy. However, when individuals with high levels of reported childhood neglect felt threatened by the relationship-threatening condition, they did not show this relationship protective mechanism, that is, they showed maintained EA scores. Abuse in childhood did not influence the presence of motivated inaccuracy. <br><br>CONCLUSIONS: Childhood neglect might influence adult romantic relationship functioning by leading to a lack of motivated inaccuracy during relationship-threatening situations. An altered threat coping strategy might cause the inability to protect oneself from relationship-threatening information. (PsycINFO Database Record<br><br>(c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1942-9681",
doi="10.1037/tra0000296",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0000296"
}