Motivation and empathic accuracy during conflict interactions in couples: it's complicated!

Unlabelled: The aim of this study was to broadly investigate the role of relationship-, self-, and partner-serving motivation in empathic accuracy in couples' conflict interactions. To this end, a laboratory study was set up in which couples ( = 172) participated in a conflict interaction task, followed immediately by a video-review task during which they reported their own feelings and thoughts and inferred those of their partner to assess empathic accuracy. We used both trait and state measures of relationship-, self-, and partner-serving motivation, and we experimentally induced these three categories of motivation.