黑料网

Fostering shared understanding between romantic partners may be a powerful way for people to navigate uncertainty and build a more meaningful life, a study by 黑料网 researchers suggests.

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that co-creating a shared worldview can buffer against distress, even in highly charged social and political contexts. For example, front-line health-care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Americans during the Black Lives Matter movement reported less uncertainty and more meaning when they understood the world around them in the same way as their partners. Sharing a perception of reality with a partner makes one鈥檚 view of reality seem true.

While previous research has shown that people overwhelmingly cite personal relationships as their primary source of meaning in life, it has been less clear which aspects of relationships contribute to this feeling.

鈥淥ur approach was different from earlier work on how relationships promote meaning, which tended to focus on aspects like belonging or support,鈥� said M. Catalina Enestrom, lead author of the article, written while she was a doctoral student in psychology at 黑料网. She is now a post-doctoral fellow at IESE Business School in Barcelona. 鈥淲e set out to explore whether sharing thoughts, ideas and concerns about the world with a romantic partner could enhance meaning by reducing uncertainty about one鈥檚 environment.鈥�

A new understanding of the benefits of relationships

鈥淎s couples accumulate shared experiences, shared feelings, goals, and memories, they develop a generalized shared reality,鈥� said senior author John Lydon, a psychology professor at 黑料网. 鈥淭his is different from simply feeling close or supported. It鈥檚 not just 鈥榤y partner gets me,鈥� it鈥檚 鈥榳e get it.鈥欌��

Enestrom explained that shared reality can emerge from both shared experiences and shared interpretations.

鈥淪hared reality can form, for instance, when a couple watches a horror movie together and one or both partners perceive that they both find it scary. But shared reality doesn鈥檛 necessarily require shared experiences. One partner can describe a stressful event they experienced, and if the other partner sees it the same way, this too can foster shared reality. As couples accumulate these shared reality experiences, they come to develop a sense of shared understanding about the world in general.鈥�

A sense of coherence and purpose

Although there is no single definition of 鈥渕eaning,鈥� researchers often describe it as a sense of coherence and purpose. Prior studies have shown that experiencing meaning in life is associated with better coping, greater happiness and improved health outcomes.

To arrive at their findings, the researchers conducted five studies involving nearly 1,300 adults in Canada and the U.S, using a variety of methods, from lab-based tasks to online surveys and experiments, to test their hypothesis. They consistently found that a shared sense of reality reduced uncertainty, which in turn increased participants鈥� sense of meaning.

The study

鈥淢eaning-making with romantic partners: Shared reality promotes meaning in life by reducing uncertainty鈥� by M Catalina Enestrom, Maya Rossignac-Milon, Amanda L Forest,^, John E Lydon

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes

DOI:

Funding

The research was funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Pittsburgh.

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