Positive Couple Interactions and Daily Cortisol: On the Stress-Protecting Role of Intimacy

Beate Ditzen · Christiane A. Hoppmann · Petra Liselotte Klumb

242 citations0/0 files storedPsychosomatic Medicine

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Attachment and Relationship Dynamics Family Dynamics and Relationships Stress Responses and Cortisol

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether intimacy might be associated with reduced daily salivary cortisol levels in couples, thereby adding to the epidemiologic literature on reduced health burden in happy couples. METHODS: A total of 51 dual-earner couples reported time spent on intimacy, stated their current affect quality, and provided saliva samples for cortisol estimation approximately every 3 hours in a 1-week time-sampling assessment. In addition, participants provided data on chronic problems of work organization. RESULTS: Multilevel analyses revealed that intimacy was significantly associated with reduced daily salivary cortisol levels. There was an interaction effect of intimacy with chronic problems of work organization in terms of their relationship with cortisol levels, suggesting a buffering effect of intimacy on work-related elevated cortisol levels. Above this, the association between intimacy and cortisol was mediated by positive affect. Intimacy and affect together explained 7% of daily salivary cortisol variance. CONCLUSIONS: Our results are in line with previous studies on the effect of intimacy on cortisol stress responses in the laboratory as well as with epidemiologic data on health beneficial effects of happy marital relationships.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 242 citations exist upstream.

References

1985Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis.1982Asymptotic Confidence Intervals for Indirect Effects in Structural Equation Models 1979SOCIAL NETWORKS, HOST RESISTANCE, AND MORTALITY: A NINE-YEAR FOLLOW-UP STUDY OF ALAMEDA COUNTY RESIDENTS 2004Social Relationships and Health.2000Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight.2001Marriage and health: His and hers.2003Social support and oxytocin interact to suppress cortisol and subjective responses to psychosocial stress 2005Does positive affect influence health?

Cited by

2017A Review of the Physiological Effects and Mechanisms of Singing 2017Social interactions in daily life 2012Dyadic coping, insecure attachment, and cortisol stress recovery following experimentally induced stress.2014Sexual Activity and Psychological Health As Mediators of the Relationship Between Physical Health and Marital Quality 2015Thriving through relationships

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.