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Simulated relationships offer insight into real ones
Diana Yates,
Life Sciences Editor
217-333-5802; diya@illinois.edu
Released
8/7/2007
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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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Editor’s note: To reach Amanda Vicary, call 217-378-8780; e-mail: avicary2@illinois.edu. To reach R.
Chris Fraley, call 217-333-3486; email: rcfraley@illinois.edu.
