Time spent in housework and leisure: Links with parents' physiological recovery from work.

Spouses' balancing of housework and leisure activities at home may affect their recovery from work. This paper reports on a study of everyday family life in which 30 dual-earner couples were tracked around their homes by researchers who recorded their locations and activities every 10 min. For women, the most frequently pursued activities at home were housework, communication, and leisure; husbands spent the most time in leisure activities, followed by communication and housework. Spouses differed in their total time at home and their proportion of time devoted to leisure and housework activities, with wives observed more often in housework and husbands observed more often in leisure activities. Both wives and husbands who devoted more time to housework had higher levels of evening cortisol and weaker afternoon-to-evening recovery. For wives, husbands' increased housework time also predicted stronger evening cortisol recovery. When both spouses' activities were entered in the same model, leisure predicted husbands' evening cortisol, such that husbands who apportioned more time to leisure, and whose wives apportioned less time to leisure, showed stronger after-work recovery. These results suggest that the division of labor within couples may have implications for physical health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

For better or worse? Coregulation of couples’ cortisol levels and mood states.

Although a majority of adults live with a close relationship partner, little is known about whether and how partners’ momentary affect and physiology covary, or “coregulate.” This study used a dyadic multilevel modeling approach to explore the coregulation of spouses’ mood states and cortisol levels in 30 married couples who sampled saliva and reported on mood states 4 times per day for 3 days. For both husbands and wives, own cortisol level was positively associated with partner’s cortisol level, even after sampling time was controlled. For wives, marital satisfaction weakened the strength of this effect. Partner’s negative mood was positively associated with own negative mood for both husbands and wives. Marital satisfaction fully moderated this effect, reducing the strength of the association between one’s own and one’s partner’s negative mood states. Spouses’ positive moods were not correlated. As expected, within-couple coregulation coefficients were stronger when mood and cortisol were sampled in the early morning and evening, when spouses were together at home, than during the workday. The results suggest that spouses’ fluctuations in negative mood and cortisol levels are linked over several days and that marital satisfaction may buffer spouses from their partners’ negative mood or stress state. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing the scholarly impact of health psychology: A citation analysis of articles published from 1993 to 2003.

Objective: We conducted a citation analysis to explore the impact of articles published in Health Psychology and determine whether the journal is fulfilling its stated mission. Design: Six years of articles (N = 408) representing three editorial tenures from 1993–2003 were selected for analysis. Main Outcome Measures: Articles were coded for several dimensions enabling examination of the relationship of article features to subsequent citations rates. Journals citing articles published in Health Psychology were classified into four categories: (1) psychology, (2) medicine, (3) public health and health policy, and (4) other journals. Results: The majority of citations of Health Psychology articles were in psychology journals, followed closely by medical journals. Studies reporting data collected from college students, and discussing the theoretical implications of findings, were more likely to be cited in psychology journals, whereas studies reporting data from clinical populations, and discussing the practice implications of findings, were more likely to be cited in medical journals. Time since publication and page length were both associated with increased citation counts, and review articles were cited more frequently than observational studies. Conclusion: Articles published in Health Psychology have a wide reach, informing psychology, medicine, public health and health policy. Certain characteristics of articles affect their subsequent pattern of citation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital satisfaction, recovery from work, and diurnal cortisol among men and women.

Design: Multilevel modeling was used to model relationships between salivary cortisol, daily diary ratings of work experiences, and Marital Adjustment Test scores (Locke & Wallace, 1959), in a sample of 60 adults who sampled saliva 4 times per day over 3 days. Results: Among women but not men, marital satisfaction was significantly associated with a stronger basal cortisol cycle, with higher morning values and a steeper decline across the day. For women but not men, marital satisfaction moderated the within-subjects association between afternoon and evening cortisol level, such that marital quality appeared to bolster women's physiological recovery from work. For both men and women, evening cortisol was lower than usual on higher-workload days, and marital satisfaction augmented this association among women. Men showed higher evening cortisol after more distressing social experiences at work, an association that was strongest among men with higher marital satisfaction. Conclusion: This work has implications for the study of physiological recovery from work, and also suggests a pathway by which marital satisfaction influences allostatic load and physical health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)