Patterns of perceived partner responsiveness and well-being in Japan and the United States

Abstract

Quality of marital relationships is consistently linked to personal well-being. However, almost all of the studies linking marital processes to well-being have been conducted in Western (particularly North American) countries. Growing evidence shows that perceived partner responsiveness is a central relationship process predicting well-being in Western contexts but little is known about whether this association generalizes to other countries. The present work investigated whether the predictive role of perceived partner responsiveness in well-being differs across the United States and Japan-2 contexts with contrasting views on how the self is conceptualized in relation to the social group. A large life span sample of married or long-term cohabiting adults (n = 3,079, age range = 33-83 in the United States and n = 861, age range = 30-79 in Japan) completed measures of perceived partner responsiveness, hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, and demographic (age, gender, education) and personality (extraversion and neuroticism) covariates known to predict well-being. Perceived partner responsiveness positively predicted hedonic and eudaimonic well-being both in the U.S. and in Japan. However, perceived partner responsiveness more strongly predicted both types of well-being in the United States as compared with Japan. The difference in slopes across the 2 countries was greater for eudaimonic as compared with hedonic well-being. The interaction between perceived partner responsiveness and country held even after controlling for demographic factors and personality traits. By showing that the role of perceived partner responsiveness in well-being may be influenced by cultural context, our findings contribute to achieving a more nuanced picture of the role of relationships in personal well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record

Figure 1

Schematic representation of the path analysis model testing differences in the slope of perceived partner responsiveness predicting well-being across Japan and the US.

Figure 2

Predicting eudaimonic well-being (Panel A) and hedonic well-being (Panel B) from perceived partner responsiveness across the United States and Japan. Both the predictor and outcomes were standardized using pooled standard deviations.