Dyadic links between hostility, social disconnection, and appetite regulation

Abstract

Experiences of social disconnection, like hostile marital interactions, have the ability to “get under our skin” and cause deleterious health outcomes by thwarting our fundamental need to belong. Appetite regulation, a biological process that is susceptible to stress and implicated in many health outcomes, may help to clarify the physiological mechanisms involved in the relationship between social disconnection and health outcomes. Using multilevel structural equation modeling in an actor-partner interdependence framework, the current study aimed to determine if observed hostility from a spouse during a marital conflict discussion predicted their partner’s ghrelin levels (i.e., an appetite-relevant hormone implicated in meal initiation) via increases in their partner’s disconnection. We hypothesized that greater amounts of hostility from an actor during the discussion would predict higher partner reports of disconnection, thereby predicting increased partner ghrelin levels. Forty-seven couples completed two counterbalanced study visits that were identical aside from the discussion topic (i.e., conflict or control). Data utilized in this study were from the conflict discussions, which were observationally coded to assess hostility. Additionally, couples separately rated their subjective feelings of disconnection after the conflict and provided 5 blood samples (i.e., 1 upon arrival to the lab and 4 after the conflict discussion). The samples were assayed to determine levels of total and active ghrelin at each time point. Results did not support the hypothesis that partner disconnection mediated the relationship between actor hostility and partner ghrelin. Moreover, in contrast to prior findings, partner hostility and actor disconnection were also not found to be related to ghrelin. Due to the puzzling pattern of results, further analysis and exploration of study measures needs to be conducted before meaningful interpretations can be made.