Does it matter whether we or I talk about us? Distinguishing we-talk in couples’ conflict discussions and partners’ private thoughts before and after conflict

Abstract

According to extensive evidence, we-talk—couples’ use of first-person, plural pronouns—predicts better relationship quality and well-being. However, prior work has not distinguished we-talk by its context, which varies widely across studies. Also, little is known about we-talk’s consistency over time. To assess the stability and correlates of we-talk in private versus conversational contexts, 43 married couples’ language was captured during a marital problem discussion and in each partner’s privately recorded thoughts before and after conflict. Participants were asked to describe any current thoughts and feelings in the baseline thought-listing and to focus on their reaction to the conflict itself in the post-conflict sample. Couples repeated this protocol at a second study visit, approximately 1 month later. We-talk in baseline and post-conflict thought-listings was largely uncorrelated with we-talk during conflict discussions, but each form of we-talk was consistent between the two study visits. Their correlates were also distinct: more we-talk during conflict was associated with less hostility during conflict, whereas more baseline we-talk predicted greater closeness in both partners, as well as lower vocally encoded arousal and more positive emotion word use in partners after conflict. These novel data reveal that we-talk can be meaningfully distinguished by its context—whether language is sampled from private thoughts or marital discussions, and whether the study procedure requests relationship talk. Taken together, these variants of we-talk may have unique implications for relationship function and well-being.