When good things happen: Explicit capitalization attempts of positive events promote intimate partners’ daily well-being

Abstract

Sharing good news with the partner improves individual and relational well-being. While prior research has confirmed the benefits of such capitalization processes, knowledge on how the type of events that are shared, and the way they are shared, affects individuals and relationships is limited. We investigated diary data from 49 married couples to examine associations between the explicitness in the disclosure of events that were either internal or external to the couple, and individual and relational well-being, above and beyond the effects of the events and their disclosure. Multilevel analyses suggested that self-esteem and relationship quality increased as a function of women’s and men’s reports of internal and external positive events, but not as a function of the mere disclosure of the event. Being explicit when disclosing a positive event to the partner, however, was positively associated with individual and relational well-being in women and in men, beyond the effects of the event and its disclosure. We discuss how the current research contributes to the understanding of the capitalization process and its contribution to well-being, underscoring the importance of communication skills.

Keywords:

• capitalization attempts
• communication explicitness
• self-esteem
• relationship quality
• well-being
• daily diary

Notes

1. For the analyses, we excluded the category ‘other’ from external positive events because it was too generic and non-specific to the purposes of the present study.

2. To rule out the possibility that explicit communication was a marker for the importance of the event rather than a factor impacting well-being per se, we examined the correlation between the importance of the positive events and the communication explicitness. No significant correlation resulted (r = .002, p = .96).