Seismic behavior of the energy-dissipative coupling beam with steel damper with slits was examined through quasi-static tests on 4 specimens. All dampers yielded in shear and no buckling was observed, which displayed two types of failure modes: fracture of damper’s flexure cell and anchorage failure between embedded elements and concrete. The overstrength factors of dampers are greater than 1.5 with an average value of 1.63. The damper deformation accounts for nearly 80% of the total beam deformation and the proportion of concrete deformation and slip deformation decrease when beam rotation increased. The concrete deformation contains flexure and shear parts, but the shear deformation only accounts for 2% of the total deformation. The cracks width are about 0.2mm when beams rotation reach 0.8%. The crack width in the fracture specimens of damper’s flexure cell reaches 0.5mm when beam rotation attain 3.3%, while other specimens reach 2mm due to anchorage failure.