Cross-cultural differences in supportive responses to positive event disclosure

ABSTRACT

Perceived reactions to sharing of good news (capitalization), can have important implications for romantic relationships. Typically, when European Americans perceive that their partners respond in an active constructive (versus passive and/or destructive,) manner, they tend to perceive their partners as more responsive and report higher relationship quality. However, cross-cultural differences in norms can influence peoples’ preference for different capitalization responses and whether different capitalization responses convey partner responsiveness. In a combined sample of European Americans, East, and South Asians (N = 915), we investigated whether links among capitalization responses, perceived partner responsiveness, and relationship quality differed by culture. People who perceived active constructive and passive destructive responses reported higher and lower levels of partner responsiveness and relationship satisfaction, respectively. Further, European Americans who perceived active destructive, and European Americans and East Asians who perceived passive constructive, responses, reported less partners responsiveness and relationship satisfaction. South Asians who perceived passive constructive responses reported greater partner responsiveness and relationship satisfaction. East and South Asians who perceived active destructive responses did not differ in relationship satisfaction. Our findings provide a cross-cultural perspective on the study of romantic couples’ positive event disclosure and expand capitalization research to an understudied sample of South Asians.

KEYWORDS:

• Perceived responses to capitalization attempts
• good news sharing
• cross-cultural
• close relationships

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Participants who answered questions about their last relationship reported less frequent active constructive, passive constructive, and active destructive responses (ps < .05), but more frequent passive destructive responses (p < .05), as well as lower perceived responsiveness (p < .001).

2. The results were virtually the same when we ran the analyses using the raw (non-imputed) data.

3. Because of previous mixed findings concerning the moderating role of gender in the association between PRCA and relationship quality, we also tested models including the three-way interaction between PRCA, culture, and gender. There were no significant three-way interactions in any of the four models; therefore, we included gender as a covariate and report analyses with two-way interactions only.