{"id":1296,"date":"2014-05-02T23:28:42","date_gmt":"2014-05-03T03:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1296"},"modified":"2017-09-06T13:18:55","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:18:55","slug":"to-cheat-or-not-to-cheat-the-cognition-of-relationship-maintenance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2014\/05\/02\/to-cheat-or-not-to-cheat-the-cognition-of-relationship-maintenance\/","title":{"rendered":"To cheat, or not to cheat? The cognition of relationship maintenance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image<\/a>

image source: rm magazine<\/p><\/div>\n

Why stick with the girl\/guy next door when a supermodel moves to town?\u00a0 Long-term romantic partnerships are difficult enough to maintain on their own, without the temptation of alternative mating partners.\u00a0 Why then, do people in committed relationships tend to stay faithful to one another?\u00a0 Or rather, what psychological processes do people exhibit to help protect their relationships in the threat of desirable\u2014especially physically attractive\u2014mating alternatives?<\/p>\n

First off, what defines physical attractiveness?\u00a0 Attractiveness may seem subjective and to differ across cultures, but there remain a few key universal aspects to the science of sex appeal.\u00a0 Simply stated, one\u2019s external appearance reflects his or her genetics and current state of health, and therefore quality as a potential mating partner.\u00a0 A symmetrical face, following the \u201cgolden ratio\u201d (distance between eyes, nose, mouth, etc.) are all signs of good genetics.\u00a0 Breast size and hip-to-waist ratio are signs of good reproductive health in women.\u00a0 Weight, skin clarity, and muscle tone, among others, are also signs of good health for both men and women.\u00a0 From an evolutionary standpoint, the best choice of a mate is the one with the best possible genetics and reproductive health, and therefore, the one found to be the most attractive.<\/p>\n

Of course, physical beauty isn\u2019t the only factor that makes a person desirable, but it would seem beneficial, from an evolutionary standpoint, to mix genetic material with as many individuals as possible.\u00a0 Why then, do two people in a relationship stay faithful to each other?\u00a0 What prevents someone from jumping at the opportunity (or opportunities) of an alternative mating partner, especially when the alternative is physically attractive?\u00a0 There must be a greater benefit to monogamy then\u2014a greater chance of survival and success of the offspring\u2014if a couple stays together.\u00a0 So are there psychological processes in place to reduce desire towards an attractive alternative?<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>

image source: fatkidatcamp.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Humans have evolved cognitive processes to help maintain relationships in the presence of desirable alternatives.\u00a0 A number of studies have focused on higher-order cognition\u2014explicit and conscious psychological processes, such as judgements, evaluations, etc.\u2014regarding relationship maintenance.\u00a0 But more recently, Maner et al. questioned whether or not relationship maintenance required conscious, effortful processing.\u00a0 Maner et al. investigated the role of automatic, early-stage attentional processes during exposure to alternative mating partners.<\/p>\n

In the study, participants performed a visual cueing task to assess attentional disengagement (the amount of time it took them to divert attention away from an image of a particular face), after two different implicit priming tasks\u2014the primes either highly relevant to mating or neutral.\u00a0 Maner et al. predicted that the mating primes would increase attentional adhesion to physically attractive opposite sex targets among single participants, but would not affect those in a committed relationship.\u00a0 Moreover, they predicted that the mating primes might actually decrease attention in the committed participants as a way of preventing a possible threat to the relationship.\u00a0 That is exactly what they found.<\/p>\n

\"Maner<\/a>

Figure 2. (Maner et al., 2009)<\/p><\/div>\n

The study found that in the control prime condition (neutral priming), there was no significant difference in attentional adhesion (a measure of time) to attractive opposite sex targets between committed and single participants.\u00a0 But under the mating prime condition, there was a significant increase in attentional adhesion amongst single individuals and a significant decrease in attentional adhesion amongst committed individuals, compared to the control prime.\u00a0 Furthermore, no effects approached significance for average-looking opposite sex targets or for both attractive and average-looking same sex targets.<\/p>\n

The research suggests that implicit mating-related priming increases a (heterosexual) individual\u2019s attention towards an attractive member of the opposite sex.\u00a0 Logically, this makes sense.\u00a0 For a single looking to mingle, with sex on their mind, he\/she will pay more attention to an attractive mate.\u00a0 More interestingly, the data suggests that individuals in committed, romantic relationships reduced their attention to attractive, opposite sex alternatives in response to mating-related priming, compared to neutral priming.\u00a0 In other words, when sex is on the mind, people in relationships are inattentive to attractive alternatives.\u00a0 It is also interesting to note that this effect was not observed in regards to average-looking alternatives, which suggests that the attractiveness of the mating alternative affects<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why stick with the girl\/guy next door when a supermodel moves to town?\u00a0 Long-term romantic partnerships are difficult enough to maintain on their own, without the temptation of alternative mating partners.\u00a0 Why then, do people in committed relationships tend to stay faithful to one another?\u00a0 Or rather, what psychological processes do people exhibit to help […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216],"tags":[150206,130382,105928],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1296"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3805,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions\/3805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}