right? That’s what you’d expect. What researchers were surprised to find, however, was that passive–constructive responses (e.g., “That’s nice. Guess what happened to me today!”) had the same correlation with negative relationship outcomes as active destructive responses (e.g., “You got promoted? Say goodbye to sleep!”). In other words, responding to someone’s excitement with an obvious lack of interest, even if your comment is positive, may be just as harmful as responding with a negative, discouraging comment.
