Expressing negativity improves support from romantic partners, new research finds

When people face stressful situations, reaching out to a partner for emotional support is a common response. But not all support is created equal—and not everyone receives it in the same way. New research published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that the way people express their emotions, particularly negative emotions, can influence the quality of support they receive from romantic partners. Across three studies, the researchers found that expressing more negativity—through sadness, worry, or frustration—tended to elicit higher-quality support, even when the stressor was relatively minor.

Although receiving emotional support from close partners is linked to better coping and psychological well-being, research has mostly focused on the person giving support. Less is known about how support-seekers might influence the kind of help they receive. The authors, Kirby Sigler and Amanda Forest from the University of Pittsburgh, wanted to understand whether expressing negative emotions helps people receive better emotional support.

“I was interested in this topic because social support is an important contributor to individual and relational well-being and I wanted to begin to understand how people can effectively garner support when they experience negative events. One way to do that was to examine how people are discussing these stressful events with their partner and how they may communicate,” explained study author Kirby Sigler, a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh and member of the Pitt Relationship Processes Lab.

The researchers conducted three separate studies to explore the link between emotional expression and partner support. Each study used different methods and types of interaction to ensure the findings were robust.

Study 1 involved 386 participants in romantic relationships who were recruited online. Each person was shown a simulated text message from a partner asking for support. The message varied in two key ways: the severity of the stressor (either serious, like a home burglary, or trivial, like ruined plans due to bad weather) and the level of negative emotional expression (low versus high). After reading the message, participants wrote a response as if they were replying to their partner. These responses were then evaluated by independent coders for support quality—specifically, how caring and helpful they seemed.

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Study 2 was a preregistered follow-up with 314 participants using a similar design but a different communication format. Instead of reading and writing messages, participants listened to a voicemail from their partner describing a stressful event and recorded an audio reply. Again, the severity of the stressor and level of negative expressivity were manipulated. Coders rated the quality of each response, and participants also answered questions about their impressions of the partner’s need and their own motivations for responding.

Study 3 extended the research into real conversations. The researchers brought 104 couples into a virtual lab setting and asked one partner to talk about a real-life stressor from the past year. The other partner acted as the support-provider. Both partners then reported how much negativity was expressed, how much support was needed, and how responsive or helpful the conversation was. This study allowed the team to observe how natural emotional expression and real-world stressors influenced support behaviors.

Across all three studies, expressing more negative emotion consistently led to better-quality support from romantic partners. In Studies 1 and 2, participants gave more caring and helpful responses when the support-seeking message contained higher levels of emotional distress, regardless of whether the stressor was serious or minor. The support responses were both more responsive (showing understanding and care) and more effective at helping the partner manage the problem.

In Study 3, similar patterns emerged in real-life conversations. Partners who expressed more negativity were seen as needing more support and received more effective help in return. This held true even after accounting for other types of emotional expression, like positive or neutral comments.

One of the key mechanisms driving these effects appeared to be the way negative expressivity influenced the partner’s perception of need. When a support-seeker expressed strong emotions, their partner was more likely to think they genuinely needed help. This perception of need predicted greater effort to be supportive, especially in ways that were practically useful—such as offering perspective or helping with problem-solving.

The researchers also tested whether the seriousness of the problem made a difference. They initially expected that negative expression might backfire when the issue was trivial, but this was not supported. Across all three studies, the effects of emotional expression were not moderated by how severe the stressor was. That is, expressing negative emotions about even minor issues still prompted better support from partners.

“We were surprised to find that negativity predicted high-quality support, even for relatively trivial stressors,” Sigler told PsyPost.

Interestingly, while negativity helped elicit more support overall, it was not without some downsides. In Study 1, support-providers sometimes interpreted highly negative messages as complaining, which slightly reduced their responsiveness. In Study 2, highly negative expression led some partners to feel that the support-seeker was too dependent. And in Study 3, perceiving the support-seeker as coping poorly was linked to lower responsiveness. These findings suggest that while negative expressivity helps communicate need, it can also generate judgments that slightly dampen the support response.

Nonetheless, in all three studies, the overall effect of expressing more negative emotion was positive: partners provided better, more helpful support when they thought the person was genuinely upset.

“One key takeaway is that expressing one’s negative emotions, such as sadness, about stressful events may help communicate to others that you need support (even though this might feel vulnerable!),” Sigler explained. “However, we are not suggesting that people should express negativity inauthentically or to everyone they meet, all of the time, as expressing negativity in these ways may have different effects than what we observed.”

As with all research, there are some limitations to consider. The findings focused on short-term support interactions, long-term patterns of negative expression could lead to different results. In addition, the samples were largely composed of mixed-gender, long-term couples, which may limit generalizability. It’s not clear whether similar effects would be seen in friendships, newer relationships, or professional settings.

“One caveat to be aware of is that the negativity we investigated here was in short communications — either a hypothetical text or voicemail, or in a discussion we asked people to have for seven minutes,” Sigler said. “Another is that we studied negative expressivity’s effects on support provided by a close relationship partner. There are many situational and relational features to consider with expressions of negativity, so we would not definitively say that expressing negativity will always predict receiving high-quality support. Understanding when and for whom it does so is an important direction for future work.”

The researchers noted that future work could explore how people express their needs more clearly—whether through emotions, words, or both—and whether this changes the kind of support they receive. Another area to investigate is how cultural norms or personal histories influence responses to emotional disclosure.

“In our lab we hope to continue to examine how people can garner support when they need it, and to examine the types of stressors people are talking about and how they’re talking about them,” Sigler said.

The study, “Expressing Negativity Enhances Support From Romantic Partners, Even for Trivial Stressors,” was authored by Kirby N. Sigler and Amanda L. Forest.