Perceptions of partner social control: accuracy, bias, and daily experience

Abstract

Objective We examined accuracy and bias in people’s perceptions of their romantic partner’s daily social control attempts of daily health behaviours and how misperceptions of partner daily social control are related to both partners’ daily experiences. Design 106 cohabiting couples from the community reported on their own and their partner’s daily social control attempts (i.e., persuasion, pressure) and their daily experiences (i.e., positive and negative affect, autonomy, relationship satisfaction) across 14 consecutive days (N = 2377 reports). Multilevel path models examined tracking accuracy, projection, and mean-level bias in perceptions of partner health social control attempts, and associations between mean-level bias and daily experiences. Results Perceptions of provider influence contained significant tracking accuracy, projection, and mean-level accuracy in provider use of social control. Underperceptions of persuasion were associated with negative outcomes for the perceiver and no outcomes for the provider. Overperceptions of persuasion were associated with negative outcomes for providers and marginally higher positive affect for perceivers. Misperceptions of pressure were associated with negative outcomes for both perceivers and providers. Conclusion Results suggest that social control may have the most benefit and least harm to both partners when people accurately perceive the mean-levels of such influence attempts on their health behaviours.