Perceptions of romantic partners' emotional suppression are more biased than accurate.

Abstract

The interpersonal consequences associated with emotional suppression (ES) may indicate that perceivers accurately detect targets' use of ES. However, ES involves hiding emotional experiences and expressions and consequently provides few explicit cues for perceivers. Thus, perceivers may exhibit relatively poor accuracy in detecting targets' ES and instead base perceptions of targets' ES on their own use of ES-a bias called projection. In the current study, participants completed measures of trait ES, engaged in an emotionally relevant discussion with their intimate partner, and then reviewed the discussion to rate their own and their partners' (targets') state ES within each 30s of the discussion. Perceptions of targets' state ES were more strongly predicted by perceivers' own state ES (projection bias) than the targets' reported use of ES (tracking accuracy), particularly for perceivers' high in trait ES. This pattern of projection bias resulted in perceivers overestimating the level of targets' state ES. These results indicate that perceptions of ES are generated more from perceivers' rather than targets' use of ES, suggest informant-based ES assessments have important limitations, and advance understanding of the interpersonal effects of ES. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).