From Me to You: Stress Spillover and Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia

Stress spillover describes how stress in one life domain affects other life domains. For example, parenting stress, defined as stress related to raising a child, tends to affect how romantic partners think about, feel, and behave in their romantic relationship with their spouse. Evidence suggests that, on average, parents of young children experience a decline in romantic relationship quality as they transition into parenthood. However, not all parents experience stress spillover from their child-related stress to their romantic relationship. This study evaluated whether respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a biomarker of emotion regulation capabilities in interpersonal relationships, moderates the effect of child-related stress on marital stress among parents of young children. As part of a dyadic study, 82 cohabiting couples raising preschool aged children had their resting RSA assessed during a laboratory visit, and independently reported on their daily child-related stress and marital stress for seven consecutive days. Actor partner interdependence modelling tested the associations between child-related and marital stress for both members of the couple, as well as the moderating role of each partners’ RSA. Results indicated significant actor and partner effects of child-related stress on actor marital stress. These results show that one partner’s reports of child-related stress were related to their own reports of marital stress and to their partner’s reports of marital stress, even after adjusting for their partner’s reports of child-related stress, indicating the presence of a stress spillover effect. Furthermore, a significant interaction between partner’s reports of child-related stress and partner’s RSA when predicting actor’s marital stress revealed that this stress spillover effect was larger among individuals with lower RSA. Our findings suggest that RSA influences the extent to which parenting stress impacts one’s interpersonal behaviours in their romantic relationship