A Dyadic Growth Approach to Partner Regulation Attempts on Changes in Drinking and Negative Alcohol-Related Consequences

ABSTRACT

Background: Many individuals engage in regulation attempts to manage or reduce their partner's alcohol use. Research on partner social control behaviors has shown that regulation attempts generally factor into negative (i.e., punishing) and positive (i.e., rewarding) dimensions. In the alcohol domain, partner drinking has been associated with poorer relationship functioning through punishment. Objectives: This research applied a dyadic growth model approach to investigate changes in alcohol consumption and negative alcohol-related consequences over 6 months, and evaluated whether partner regulation attempts (punishment and reward) were influential (i.e., successful) in these changes. Methods: Married couples (N = 123 dyads) completed web-based measures of partner regulation attempts, alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related consequences three times over a 6-month period. Results: Results from dyadic growth curve analyses showed that partner punishment was significantly associated with increases in alcohol-related consequences—and marginally associated with increases in alcohol consumption—over the 6-month period. Partner reward was associated with decreases in consumption over the study period. These effects were not different for husbands and wives. Conclusion/Importance: Results support previous research demonstrating deleterious impact of partner punishing control strategies and provide important implications for future interventions and treatment.

KEYWORDS:

• Punishment
• reward
• social control
• problem drinking
• marriage
• alcohol

Declaration of interest

The author reports no conflict of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Funding

Preparation of this article was supported by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Grant F31AA020442.

Notes

1 The current analysis plan treats punishment and reward as time-invariant because we were interested in how punishment at one time (i.e., Time 0 or baseline) influenced changes in drinking. However, we also ran a model utilizing punishment and reward as time-varying predictors. Results were similar with two exceptions. The partner effect of punishment on the intercept was no longer significant; the partner effect of punishment on the slope (the primary analysis of interest) remained significant. In addition, the previously marginal actor reward × time interaction for alcohol-related consequences was significant in this model, b = −1.007, p =.002, suggesting that reward was associated with decreases in own consequences over time.