A study from Oregon State University recently found that when people feel an argument is resolved, the emotional response linked to it is lessened and may even disappear. The stress reduction from that may significantly impact overall health.
“Everyone experiences stress in their daily lives. You aren’t going to stop stressful things from happening. But the extent to which you can tie them off, bring them to an end and resolve them is definitely going to pay dividends in terms of your well-being,” said Robert Stawski, senior author on the study and an associate professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences. “Resolving your arguments is quite important for maintaining well-being in daily life.”
Major chronic stressors such as poverty or violence have long been known to affect physical health, including things such as heart disease and a weakened immune system, and mental health problems like depression or anxiety.
Other types of stressors can also impact health.
“Daily stressors — specifically the minor, small inconveniences that we have throughout the day — even those have lasting impacts on mortality and things like inflammation and cognitive function,” said Dakota Witzel, lead author and a doctoral student in human development and family studies at OSU.
Stawski and Witzel used data for their study from National Study of Daily Experiences, an extensive survey of over 2,000 people who answered questions about their feelings and experiences for eight days consecutively.
The researchers looked at reported arguments and times where a person could have argued but did not, also called avoided arguments. Then, they measured how the experience impacted the reported change in negative and positive emotions for that day and the next.
Emotional changes, or an increase or decrease in positive and negative emotions, on the day of an event is called “reactivity” while the prolonged toll affecting the day after is called “residue.”
The results showed that on the day of an incident, those who felt on an argument or avoided argument was resolved reported about half of the reactivity people whose disagreements were not solved reported. The day following, those who felt the matter was resolved did not report a prolonged effect from the argument or avoided argument.
The study also found that adults 68 and older were over 40% more likely to report an argument as resolved in comparison to people 45 and younger. Resolution continued to have the same impact regardless of age.
Stawski said that though people cannot control every stressor, they can develop their own emotional responses. “Some people are more reactive than other people,” he said. “But the extent to which you can tie off the stress so it’s not having this gnawing impact at you over the course of the day or a few days will help minimize the potential long-term impact.”
Stawski and Witzel aim to take another look at disagreements in the future to measure which contexts and relationships contributed to the most stressful arguments.
By: Hannah Ramsey
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