When couples enter a conflict, their emotions can become escalated, often lending to self- protection and aggression, and even good partners can end up in intense fights that damage the relationship. Understanding this impulse, and learning how to calm down, to shift out of fight or flight mode, and connect, can help couples develop awareness, empathy, and other mentalizing skills that can encourage conflict resolution.
Biometric indicators have helped us maintain our physical health and fitness, but are they helping us alleviate—or are they in fact lending to—our hectic lifestyles and untimely work schedules? How are our lifestyles affecting our mental fitness? As wearable tech such as the Apple Watch becomes more common in society, we find rises in cases of anxiety disorders, depression, stress-induced psychosomatic disorders like hypertension, variations in blood sugar levels, migraines, peptic ulcers, heart diseases and stroke. The research is well defined in associating exposure to stressful environments over a long duration with feelings of stress, physical and emotional fatigue, and consequently, impulsive behavior (Simon, Jiryis, & Admon, 2021; Leppink, Odlaug, Lust, Christenson, & Grant, 2016; Raio, Konova, & Otto, 2020).
The proposed study seeks to replicate recent research that a wearable device which monitors biometric indicators such as heart rate and body temperature can effectively predict impulse behavior. Next, based on research that shows a correlation between mindfulness and empathy (Shapiro, Schwartz, & Bonner, 1998; Lamothe, Rondeau, Malboeuf-Hurtubise, Duval, & Sultan, 2016), we look to test whether participants wearing a device which predicts and alerts the user to heightened emotional states leads to a reduction in response time (RT) in dialogue during therapy sessions. Last, to test the affective valence of the therapy sessions, we will conduct a statistical analysis of conflict language used during couples therapy sessions to learn whether being alerted to impulse states—and thus slowing RT—is associated with a reduction in conflict behavior.
Read the full research proposal here.