Interdependent Partners Experience Stronger Affective Responses to Simultaneous Positive and Negative Social Feedback

Social rejection and acceptance are typically investigated from the perspective of individuals receiving, or observing, such information independent of others. However, experiences of rejection and acceptance often unfold in dyadic contexts, and can have implications for how partners interact, relate, and support each other, especially when partners experience incongruent social feedback (e.g., when others express caring for you but disapprove of your partner). How do people respond to a partner’s outcomes when faced with this type of challenging (i.e., incongruent) information? Employing a novel dyadic task, we examined affective responses to simultaneous social feedback information among cohabiting couples (Nparticipants = 168). Consistent with preregistered hypotheses, participants reporting higher positive relational interdependence were more likely to experience their partner’s social feedback as a personal reward or loss. This pattern emerged even when participants received incongruent social feedback (e.g., receiving negative feedback while a partner received positive feedback). Moreover, positive affect for a partner’s social feedback was associated with being responsive to the partner’s outcomes (i.e., higher perceived partner support, and perceived capitalization attempts). Together, findings suggest that positive relational interdependence allows people to respond sensitively to their partner’s rewarding and aversive events despite interference that may come from self-directed challenging (i.e., incongruent) information.