Do others really know us better? Predicting migraine activity from self- and other-ratings of negative emotion

The validity of self-reported negative emotion to predict health status is limited by response biases, introspection limitations, and methodological confounds. The reports of significant others about the patients' negative emotion may circumvent these limitations. This study sought to compare the validity of self- versus other-reported negative emotion as a correlate of migraine headache activity.

On 89 patients with migraine headache (74 women and 15 men), we correlated self-ratings and significant-other-ratings of patients' negative emotion with patients' report of migraine frequency and severity, which were assessed both cross-sectionally and prospectively, 3 months later.

Other-reported negative emotion correlated with migraine activity better than did self-reported negative emotion, both cross-sectionally and prospectively. Patterns were different for women and men, however. Among women, other-reported negative emotion was positively associated with migraine activity. Among men, other-reported negative emotion was inversely associated with migraine frequency and severity.

The results suggest that it may be valuable to obtain significant-other-ratings when assessing negative emotion in patients and that the genders may differ in how others' ratings are related to the patients' health.