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Negative Affect Reciprocity

Negative affect reciprocity (also called reciprocation of negativity or mutual escalation) refers to the tendency for one person's negative behavior to instigate another's negative behavior. It references a pattern of behavior between two people in relationship to each other, where one person's negative actions, such as criticism or an angry facial expression, are followed by another's similarly valenced actions. Repeated patterns of negative reciprocity turn into negative spirals, continued patterns of reciprocity that work to create a poor relational climate and bring about other negative consequences within relationships. This entry discusses the nature and effects of negative affect reciprocity in a variety of personal relationships, focusing on the behaviors that may be involved and the characteristics of relationships likely to have high levels of negative affect reciprocity.

What Behaviors Are Negative?

Negative affect (also called negative emotion) may be manifested during interaction in intimate relationships in many ways. The five primary negative emotions or affects are anger, shame/guilt, fear/anxiety, contempt/disgust, and sadness. Anger and contempt are sometimes studied together as hostility, and shame and sadness are sometimes viewed together as despair.

Whereas these emotions can arise from interacting with others, particularly in difficult situations, the emotions themselves can also lead to behaviors such as negative forms of conflict (e.g., coercion, aversion, or invalidation), nonverbal behavior—including silence and frowning, defensiveness, physical aggression or violence, belligerence, which can occur with verbal or nonverbal messages—and withdrawal, or leaving an interaction either physically or mentally. Additionally, negative affect can show up as criticism, disagreement, disapproval, interruptions, put downs, threats, ignoring, changing topics, and denials of responsibility.

Patterns of reciprocity may begin while a person is speaking or listening to another. So, for instance, one friend may be listening to another's problems with her boyfriend, and the listener may begin to sigh. The speaker may reciprocate the sigh—or some other largely negative behavior—in response. The primary characteristic of affect reciprocity is that one person's negative behavior leads to another's negative behavior, and the second person's behavior is not likely to have occurred if the initial action had not taken place. Patterns of behavior-affecting-behavior can continue or spiral over time, creating long-term and problematic cycles for relational partners. So, when a child yells at his mother, and the mother responds with criticism, the son may respond with an angry retort, and so on, turning it into an interaction that is both undesirable on its own and that can have long-lasting effects.

Who is Affected?

Behavioral reciprocity is common across all interpersonal interactions (i.e., exchanges that occur between people, such as the mother/son discussed). People in close relationships depend on each other to meet their needs and goals, and reciprocity—both negative and positive—tends to be more pronounced when people know each other well or cohabitate. As people's lives and behaviors become enmeshed, there are more opportunities for—and consequences of—patterned interaction.

Most research on reciprocated affect has been conducted with heterosexual “romantic” couples. Researchers have also looked at reciprocated affect in other familial relationships, including the greater likelihood that siblings will reciprocate each other's negative behaviors than reciprocate their friends' negative behaviors. Most notably, there has been a focus on reciprocity in parent-child relationships. For example, negative reciprocity is particularly likely between a child and his or her mother during encounters that involve criticism or discipline and between fathers and their children at play.

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