Stress and Well-Being during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China: The Moderating Role of Communication

To examine how and when stress affect individual (i.e., psychological health) and relationship well-being (i.e., marital satisfaction) during the COVID-19 pandemic, the present study used latent profile analysis to identify the typologies of communication and investigated whether the typologies would moderate the associations between stress and individual and relationship well-being in a sample of adults living in China (N = 3,354). Results revealed that (a) stress was negatively associated with psychological health and marital satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic and that its effect on psychological health was greater than that on marital satisfaction and (b) four profiles were identified: low communication (10%), moderate communication (43%), positive communication (43%), and contradictory communication (5%). Further, the typologies moderated the effects of stress on psychological health and marital satisfaction, but the patterns of moderation differed in psychological health and marital satisfaction.