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Simulated relationships offer insight into real
ones
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Is it me, or are you a less than ideal partner? For
psychologists studying how people manage
romantic relationships, that’s not an easy
question to answer.
What if one of the partners
is deeply afraid of intimacy? Could she be
acting in ways that undermine the relationship?
Or is her partner contributing to the problem?
In a new study appearing in Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers at the
University of Illinois explore these issues by
looking at the choices people make in simulated
online dating relationships. By standardizing
the behavior of the romantic “partner,” the
study clarifies how each participant’s outlook
influences his or her choices and satisfaction
with the romance.
The online study took participants through a
series of scenarios about a relationship with a
fictional partner. Each scenario ended with two
options, from which the participant chose his or
her response.
“The interesting thing is that all the
participants were reacting to the same person,
the same scenario,” said
psychology
graduate student Amanda Vicary, a co-author on
the study with psychology professor R. Chris
Fraley. “And yet the pattern of their responses
was quite different.”
Vicary and Fraley modeled their study on a 1979
Random House interactive fiction series, “Choose
Your Own Adventure,” which allowed the reader to
select from multiple options at critical points
in the story. Each choice directed the reader to
a new scenario.
This approach appealed to the researchers
because earlier studies of individual behavior
in relationships asked participants to make
choices based solely on descriptions of isolated
events. The sequential nature of the new study
was more like an actual relationship, Vicary
said, in that it involved ongoing interactions
with the same partner.
The online study began with an assessment of
participant attachment styles. A series of
questions about how much the person trusts,
confides in or relies on a current or former
romantic partner allowed the researchers to
profile the participant’s level of security or
insecurity, anxiety, or intimacy-avoidance in
romantic relationships. Fraley is a creator of
this Experience in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R)
inventory, a tool for measuring participants’
attachment styles.
After completing the ECR-R inventory and reading
instructions, participants answered a series of
20 relationship questions. Each question
described an event in the relationship and gave
the participant an opportunity to select one of
two options for responding to the event. One of
the options enhanced the relationship; the other
undermined it.
The study included three experiments, each
involving a different group of participants. In
the first, all participants read the same story
and selected from the same options at the end of
each scenario. In the second, a participant
interacted with either a supportive or
unsupportive partner throughout the exercise. In
both experiments, the participants’ choices had
no influence on the behavior of their partners
or on the scenarios.
In the third experiment, however, their choices
did influence the simulated partners’ responses.
If the participant made a relationship-enhancing
choice, he or she got a positive verbal response
from the simulated partner and then moved to a
new scenario involving a supportive version of
that partner. Making a negative choice elicited
a negative, rejecting response from the partner
and a new scenario in which the partner behaved
in an unsupportive way.
The researchers found that a participant’s
attachment style (that is, secure or insecure,
anxious or intimacy-avoidant) was a good
predictor of the pattern of his or her choices.
“People who are highly insecure are more likely
to interpret their partners’ actions in a
negative way and then choose to respond in
kind,” Vicary said. The more secure individuals
more often chose the positive,
relationship-enhancing options.
As they progressed through the list of
scenarios, most of the participants increased
the rate at which they made positive choices.
The anxious or avoidant participants increased
their relationship-enhancing choices more
gradually than their peers, however. This was
true even in the third experiment, when their
choices elicited immediate feedback in the form
of a positive or negative response.
“It is interesting that even when highly
insecure individuals experience responses as a
direct function of their actions, they are still
relatively slow to adopt beneficial relationship
choices,” the authors wrote. “It is possible
that insecure individuals simply do not realize
the detrimental impact that their actions have
on their relationships.”
Not surprisingly, participants who interacted
with supportive partners were quicker to make
positive choices and tended to be more satisfied
with the interaction.
The researchers also found that the nature of
the choices each participant made determined his
or her satisfaction with the simulated
relationship: The more positive choices he or
she made, the more satisfied the participant was
with the relationship at the end of the
experiment.
“This finding is noteworthy because it
demonstrates that one’s own internal dynamics
affect relationship satisfaction independently
of the behavior of one’s partner,” the authors
wrote.
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