The Relationship Between Threat Appraisal and Social Constraints in Cancer Survivors and Their Spouses

Social constraints stem from unsupportive social environments and are associated with reluctance to discuss stressor-related thoughts and feelings. Support deterioration and erosion models provide a framework for explaining how a cancer patient's threat appraisal contributes to a spouse's inadvertent constraint on the patient's emotional expression. Also, based on social comparison theory and the convoy model, a discrepancy in threat appraisal between patient and spouse may create social constraints. Contrary to social cognitive processing theories, we hypothesized that threat appraisals may be an antecedent of social constraints, rather than a consequence. Cancer patients (n=75) and their spouses (n=75) completed questionnaires assessing cancer-related threat appraisals and perceived spousal social constraints at two time points. Cross-lagged panel design results suggested that patient appraisal precedes and predicts patients’ perception of social constraints. However, patient and spouse appraisals did not significantly interact in predicting spousal constraints. Limitations and implications are discussed.