Absent but Not Gone

Spouses influence each other’s psychological functioning and quality of life. To explore whether this interdependence continues after a person becomes widowed, we tested whether deceased spouses’ characteristics were associated with their widowed partners’ later quality of life using couples drawn from a multinational sample of aging adults. Independent subsamples (ns = 221 and 325) were assessed before and after a spouse’s death. Regressions revealed that deceased partners’ quality of life prior to their death positively predicted their spouses’ quality of life after the partners’ death, even when we controlled for spouses’ prior quality of life to account for environmental factors shared within couples. Further, widowed participants’ quality of life was lower than nonwidowed couples’ 2 years before and after their partners’ death, but was equivalent 4 years prior. Finally, the strength of the association between partners’ earlier quality of life and participants’ later quality of life did not differ between widowed and nonwidowed participants. These findings suggest that interdependence in quality of life continues after one’s partner has passed away.

配偶之间会相互影响彼此的心理机能和生活质量。为探究在一方丧偶后这种相互依存关系是否依然存在，我们从一个跨国老年人群样本中选取多对夫妇，以此检验已故配偶的特征是否与在世配偶日后的生活质量相关。我们对独立子样本（样本量分别为221和325）在配偶去世前后进行了评估。回归分析显示，即便我们控制了在世配偶此前的生活质量以考量夫妻间共有的环境因素，已故配偶生前的生活质量仍能正向预测在世配偶在其去世后的生活质量。此外，丧偶参与者在其配偶去世前后两年的生活质量低于未丧偶的夫妇，但在配偶去世前四年时，两者生活质量相当。最后，无论是丧偶还是未丧偶的参与者，其伴侣早期生活质量与参与者后期生活质量之间的关联强度并无差异。这些研究结果表明，在伴侣离世后，生活质量方面的相互依存关系依然存在。