Together in a digital world: Motivational states, affect, and relationship quality in couples’ messenger communication

Our study investigates if couples with a high relationship quality judge their partner’s mental state more accurately. We examine associations between different aspects of empathic accuracy and relationship quality in the context of couples’ messenger communication. We propose a new procedure for assessing the empathic accuracy of judgments of affect and interpersonal motivational states. Using the Truth and Bias Model and the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, data from N = 102 participants (51 couples) was analyzed to examine how empathic accuracy of different variables (affective states, e.g. valence and arousal, and interpersonal motivational states, e.g. agency and communion) are related to quality of relationship. Contrary to our pre-registered hypotheses, results do not indicate a clear positive association with relationship quality across all facets of empathic accuracy. However, empathic accuracy of affective valence was significantly associated with relationship quality, and a similar trend emerged for empathic accuracy of agentic motivational states. These findings provide some evidence for the connection of relationship quality and empathic accuracy of affective states in the context of couples’ messenger communication. Our findings underline the relevance of differentially examining affective and motivational subdomains of empathic accuracy and their outcomes. In addition, our results call for further research on empathic accuracy of agentic motivational states in couples.