Aid and Influence: Health-Promoting Exchanges of Older Married Partners

Abstract

Dyadic exchanges of support and control were investigated in couples in which the husband was recently treated or assessed for heart disease. Each partner in 61 marital dyads ( N = 122 participants) reported the frequency with which both social support and social control to promote a healthy lifestyle were provided to and received from one another. Multivariate findings demonstrated the influence of intrapersonal (or actor) and interpersonal (or partner) contributions of providing support and control to each spouse’s perception of receiving such exchanges from the other. These findings reveal that marital partners’ perspectives of receipt of health-related exchanges of support and control are associated not only with the behavior of the partner, but also with their own initiation of health-promoting exchanges on their partner’s behalf.