Spouses’ Social Control of Health Behaviors: Use and Effectiveness of Specific Strategies

Forty-four couples described the strategies they used in attempting to prompt their partner to engage in particular health behaviors, strategies used by their partner that were effective and ineffective in prompting their own engagement in health behaviors, and their own psychological reactions to the partner’s use of social control. Strategies that were more frequently mentioned as effective rather than ineffective included the partner also engaging in the desired health behavior, modeling the health behavior, discussing health issues, and providing emotional support. Spouses reported feeling lower self-esteem, less positive affect, and more negative affect in response to their partner’s use of ineffective rather than effective strategies. In addition, both spouses rated their partners’ use of ineffective (compared to effective) strategies as less motivated by a concern for the participant’s welfare and more motivated by their partner’s own desire to exert control within the relationship.