Motivated Cognition in Relationships: The Pursuit of Belonging

Arya never expected it to last when she started dating Aaron. Before she met him, she endured one short-lived relationship after the other. She could never completely convince herself that her past partners cared for her and keeping her distance always seemed like the best way to avoid being hurt. Aaron was somehow different. Even though Arya cannot exactly explain why Aaron wants to be with her, her doubts no longer dissuade her from wanting to be with him. The value she sees in caring for him has come to mean more to her than the safety to be had in keeping some distance.

Low in self-esteem like Skyler, Arya has no trouble seeing the potential to be hurt in the situations populating her married life. Unlike Skyler, the pursuit of safety usually does not hold her hostage. While Skyler withdraws in situations that threaten hurt, Arya typically draws even closer to Aaron. Safety has lost its imperial sway over value because valuing Aaron has come to give so much meaning and purpose to her actions in and outside her relationship. Aaron is such a central part of Arya’s life that she no longer wants to take her doubts about his feelings for her too seriously. The thought of losing the meaning he gives to her life pains her more than the thought of being let down by him. For Arya, the balance of power between safety and value gradually shifted in ways that gave sustaining her sense of conviction greater power to monopolize goal pursuit.

Arya’s experience is not unique. In every relationship, there are times when value has to take precedence over safety for the relationship to thrive. This chapter explores the special circumstances that result in value becoming a monopolizing goal. In so doing, it gives new dynamism to the risk regulation balance. Figure 6.1 captures this potential for dynamism by giving the equilibrium point “wheels” and momentum. In this balance, safety is not fixed as the goal with greater leveraging power to tip attention, inference, and behavior in its favor. Instead, the equilibrium point can shift in value’s decided favor when personal or relationship contexts consistently make sustaining a sense of conviction in the value of caring and nurturing behavior more important than not being hurt.

FIGURE 6.1 Dynamism in the Risk Regulation Balance

The easiest place to see the monopolizing power of value is in the earliest stage of relationships. People who are newly romantically involved defy every known principle of risk regulation. They are both wildly anxious and uncertain about their partner’s caring and obsessively convinced that their partner is perfect for them (Brickman, 1987: Eastwick & Finkel, 2008). This is no random coincidence. For a relationship to form, people need to leap before they look. They need to risk seeking connection, with smiles, touches, self-disclosure, and overt expressions of interest, while knowing a potential partner might not reciprocate. For bonds to form in the face of such a clear safety threat, an especially weighty and dramatic force is needed to shift the balance of power in the competition between safety and value goals consistently and decidedly in value’s favor.

The physiological and psychological experience of romantic infatuation does just that. Neuroimaging (i.e., fMRI) studies suggest that passionate love activates subcortical areas of the brain that control reward sensitivity and goal-directed behavior (Aron et al., 2005; Bartels & Zeki, 2000; Fisher, Aron, & Brown, 2005). On a dopamine-induced high, someone passionately in love can only think about reasons to connect, obsessively focusing on all that is wonderful about the partner, an intoxicating preoccupation that leaves no psychological oxygen left for entertaining concerns about safety (Fisher, 1998; Fisher, Aron, Mashek, Haifang, & Brown, 2002). In fact, thwarting safety goal pursuits actually intensifies (rather than deactivates) value goal pursuits in fledgling relationships. People report being more passionately in love with new potential partners when they are more uncertain their affections are reciprocated (Eastwood & Finkel, 2008). Romantic infatuation imbues partners with such incontrovertible reasons to connect that the safety concerns that spurred the obsession with the partner’s perfection are masked (Brickman, 1987).

In this chapter, we expand this theme by exploring the contexts that shift the equilibrium point of the risk regulation balance decidedly in value’s favor. We start with life contexts outside the relationship that intensify the goal to possess an unequivocal sense of conviction within the relationship. We explore how self-relevant goal pursuits, such as the quest for self-integrity and the desire to perceive an orderly world, turn the pursuit of conviction and value in the relationship into a monopolizing concern. Next, we delve into the relationship itself to explore ongoing situations, such as the intensification of hopes and the accumulation of personal investments, that motivate people to put solidifying their convictions ahead of safety. This allows us to explore how sustaining conviction can motivate people to confabulate evidence of safety, putting themselves at greater objective risk of being hurt (Lemay & Clark, 2015).

We conclude the chapter by exploring how transactive goal regulation can also turn value into a monopolizing goal pursuit. Because partners in interdependent relationships can catch, satiate, and switch one another’s goals (Fitzsimons, Finkel, & van Dellen, 2015), Aaron’s pursuit of value can also motivate Arya to set aside her pursuit of safety. Explaining exactly how such goal transmission could occur brings us back to the automatic partner attitudes that underlie trust (see Chapter 3). Arya’s positive automatic attitude toward Aaron captures his long history of responsive behavior. Such an attitude signals that Aaron is not only safe to approach but worth keeping (Murray, Holmes, & Pinkus, 2010). By giving partners implicit value, more positive automatic attitudes motivate vulnerable people to discount the possibility of rejection in the very situations that pose the greatest threat to the pursuit of safety (Murray, Gomillimon, Holmes, & Harris, 2015; Murray, Gomillion, Holmes, Harris, & Lamarche, 2013).

Relationship-specific goals for safety and value are pursued as part of a broader goal system (Fitzsimons et al., 2015). They occur alongside goal pursuits that transcend the relationship, such as being a person of worth (Steele, 1988), feeling competent and autonomous (Ryan & Deci, 2000), and seeing purpose and meaning in life (Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006). Within this goal system, relationship-transcendent goals can commandeer safety and value goal pursuits as a means to meet more general motivational ends (Leary & Baumeister, 2000). As we see next, pursuing the goal to be a person of worth, doing sensible things, and living in a meaningful world can shift the equilibrium point of the risk regulation balance in favor of value. It certainly did for Arya. Her father fell unexpectedly ill just when she was contemplating asking Aaron to move in. With her expectations about her family shaken, Arya needed something else in her life to make sense. Committing to Aaron allowed her to see herself as part of a benevolent, orderly, and meaningful world, an end important enough to override her concerns about being hurt.

The power that relationship-transcendent goal pursuits have to suppress safety and intensify value goal pursuits first surfaced in research on self-affirmation. Steele (1988) offered self-affirmation theory to explain why people justify their actions in dissonance paradigms (e.g., deciding a lie was not a lie or a chosen option is infinitely preferable to a forgone one). Steele reasoned that people do not justify their actions to make behavior consistent with their thoughts and feelings as dissonance theorists assumed. Instead, he reasoned that people justify their actions to restore self-integrity – to reaffirm the belief that they are good people living sensible, value-driven lives. Steele’s insight led to decades of research exploring how simple acts of self-affirmation, such as reflecting on the values that serves as one’s most important guiding life principles, can alleviate all manners of self-protective defenses (see Sherman & Cohen, 2006, for a review).

Self-affirmation has similar power to suppress self-protection. The simple act of self-affirming inoculates people against concerns about physical and psychological safety, motivating them to approach social connection. For instance, when people reflect on the value that serves as the most important guiding principle in their lives, they step outside themselves; they report greater feelings of love and connection to others (Crocker, Niiya, & Mischkowski, 2008). The guarantee of social connection afforded by self-affirmation is such an effective prophylactic that it can even make the mortality risks posed by unhealthy behaviors seem like a more remote threat (Crocker et al., 2008).

Contemplating guiding life values can also push vulnerable people like Arya and Skyler to forgo safety for value goal pursuits in relationships. Jaremka and colleagues activated safety goal pursuits by leading participants in the threat condition to believe their partner would discover their dark secrets and become disaffected (Jaremka, Bunyan, Collins, & Sherman, 2011). Control participants had no such apprehension. Next, they introduced a competing, relationship-transcendent goal pursuit. Participants in the self-affirmation condition described how their most important personal value gave their life meaning. Participants in the neutral goal condition described why their own least important value would be important to others. Low self-esteem people who did not reflect on their most important life value sought safety over value, like Skyler. When faced with rejection, they derogated their partner and distanced themselves from the possibility of being hurt. However, low self-esteem people who reflected on their important life value behaved more like Arya. They evaluated their partner just as positively when they expected to be rejected as they did when they had no such safety concerns. Being immersed in a self-affirmation goal pursuit effectively motivated low self-esteem people to forgo safety for meaning and value within the relationship.

Encouraging vulnerable people to engage in self-affirmation goal pursuits even frees them from the socially crippling effects of mistrust. Stinson and colleagues instructed experimental participants to reflect on the life value that was most important to them (Stinson, Logel, Shepherd, & Zanna, 2011). Control participants reflected on a life value that was important to someone else. They then tracked people’s trust in the caring of those closest to them (e.g., friends, romantic partners) and comfort interacting with a new acquaintance. Self-affirming motivated less trusting people to forgo safety for value in relationships. Less trusting people who reflected on the personal value they held most dear came to believe in the integrity of their social connections more over time and they evidenced greater physical comfort engaging the social world (Stinson et al., 2011).

Although the dynamics underlying the power of self-affirmation are still a bit of a mystery, one possibility seems clear (Crocker et al., 2008). Self-affirmation’s symbolic guarantee of social connection could function as a prophylactic. Safety might be a moot goal for the self-affirmed because reflecting on personal values actively connects people to an orderly and meaningful world. Being actively engaged in this broader world can then testify that nothing bad will happen and little can be lost in forging ahead (Critcher & Dunning, 2015). In this way, the act of self-affirming allows people to put the cart (value goals) ahead of the horse (safety goals) because engaging in the pursuit of shared life goals makes safety seem beside the point, suspending this goal pursuit.

If active engagement in the social world functions as such a relationship prophylactic, what happens to the relative priority people put on pursuing safety versus value in the relationship when the stability of the social world is threatened? Does being trapped in a less orderly and predictable world shift the equilibrium point of the risk regulation balance even closer to safety? Or might such a disquieting world motivate people to pursue a compensatory sense of relationship conviction with greater force, shifting the equilibrium point of the risk regulation balance in value’s decided favor?

The research evidence points to the latter possibility. When ongoing events thwart the relationship-transcendent goal to perceive an orderly and meaningful world, vulnerable people appear to eschew safety for the hope of restoring value and meaning through the relationship (Murray, Lamarche, Gomillion, Seery, & Kondrak, 2016). The meaning maintenance model assumes that people need the world to make sense to act purposefully and efficaciously within it (Heine et al., 2006). The world makes sense when events unfold much as people expect, as happens when it rains on a cloudy day, syrup tops pancakes, and nasty people receive their just desserts. When events do not unfold as people expect, the world stops making sense and people are thrown into an aversive state of behavioral indecision. Consequently, violations of expectancy motivate people to restore meaning and order to their worlds so they might act with purpose within it once again. In fact, expectancy violations as benign as pairing words that do not naturally belong together (e.g., quickly blueberry, juicy running) motivate people to impose associations they expect to see on the world. For instance, people primed with incongruent word pairings punish prostitutes more severely for violating social convention, restoring order and stability to shaken perceptions (Randles, Proulx, & Heine, 2011).

Because relationship-specific and -transcendent goals are interconnected (Cavallo, Fitzsimons, & Holmes, 2009; Fitzsimons et al., 2015), the general desire to restore meaning and order to the world should commandeer safety and value goals for its own ends. People threatened by a disorderly and unpredictable world might compensate for disorder in the world by imposing greater order on their relationships. However, when expectancy violations impose disorder on the world, threatened perceivers impose meaning and order on only those situations that need reordering (Heine et al., 2006). For instance, people exposed to meaning threats punish social deviants, but not those who adhere to social convention.

Thus, when expectancy violations impose disorder on the world, some relationships may be in greater need of reordering than others. People who are blissfully satisfied in their relationships live in a consonant or ordered state. They go about life maintaining relationships that meet their expectations in most respects. However, people who are less satisfied live in a comparative state of disorder. They go about life maintaining a relationship that is not necessarily the one they wanted or expected to inhabit. The amount of dissonance experienced as a result of living with such a violation should be directly in proportion to the state of dissatisfaction in the relationship. Thus, the ongoing motivational push to reduce dissonance by crystallizing conviction in the relationship should intensify as satisfaction with the relationship decreases.

Consequently, when expectancy violations impose disorder on the world, people in less satisfying relationships likely need to make sense of their ongoing involvement in the relationship. They can do this by clarifying and exaggerating just how much their partner really does mean to them. The pressure they face to compensate and clarify conviction should also increase in proportion to their state of dissatisfaction. However, people who are highly satisfied in their relationship have relatively little to set right in their relationships when expectancy violations impose disorder on the world. Affirming already unequivocal relationship convictions should be all it takes to remind satisfied perceivers that life really is orderly and full of meaning and purpose.

To test these hypotheses, we created situations where the world did not turn out as expected (Murray et al., 2016). In two experiments, we violated the conventional moral that hard work pays off. Experimental participants read an abridged version of Kafka’s An Imperial Message, a story about a messenger who overcomes a series of herculean obstacles only to ultimately fail in his mission to deliver a message to the king. Control participants read a conventional narrative about a persevering tortoise triumphing over a ne’erdowell hare. In a third experiment, expectancy violation participants viewed surrealist art that presented a familiar image in an unexpected configuration (i.e., an apple floating in front of a face). Control participants viewed realist art (i.e., a landscape with a double rainbow). Participants in a fourth experiment had their expectations confounded while they watched a bizarre clip from the David Lynch movie Rabbits, while controls viewed a clip from the tried and true Wizard of Oz. In the fifth experiment, participants violated bodily expectations by physically approaching negative and avoiding positive stimuli (rather than vice versa). Participants in the expectancy violation condition pulled a joystick toward them (simulating approach) whenever a negative word appeared on a computer screen and pushed the same joystick away from them (simulating avoidance) whenever a positive word appeared, a behavioral violation. Conversely, participants in the control condition pulled a joystick toward them (simulating approach) whenever a positive word appeared and pushed the same joystick away from them (simulating avoidance) whenever a negative word appeared, the behavioral convention.

Next, we measured the priority participants put on the pursuit of safety versus value within the relationship. Participants rated their own feelings of closeness and commitment and their perceptions of their partner’s feelings of closeness and commitment. Because being more committed than one’s partner poses an objective threat to safety (see Chapter 3), Arya’s willingness to risk such vulnerability captures the heightened priority she puts on the pursuit of value goals. Therefore, we used the difference between Arya’s feelings of closeness and commitment and her perceptions of Aaron’s feelings of closeness and commitment to index goal prioritization. More positive difference scores captured compensatory conviction – feeling closer and more committed despite being relatively less certain of the partner’s closeness and commitment.

Figure 6.2 illustrates the nature of the effects we found across experiments. It depicts the association between pre-test relationship satisfaction and compensatory conviction for participants in the expectancy violation and control conditions in the first surreal stories experiment. For less satisfied perceivers, violating expectancies triggered the prioritization of value over safety. Less satisfied perceivers made stronger compensatory expressions of conviction in the expectancy violation than control condition. This meaning-restorative response also intensified in magnitude as initial satisfaction decreased (and dissonance likely increased). However, such a compensatory reaction was not at all in evidence for more satisfied perceivers. More satisfied perceivers did not report greater conviction in the expectancy violation condition, presumably because they had found enough solace in their unadulterated convictions.

The components of the compensatory conviction difference score present a still clearer picture of the psychological dynamics at play. For less satisfied perceivers, violating expectancies made the partner seem less safe and predictable. Even though the expectancies we violated had nothing at all to do with the partner, less satisfied perceivers believed their partner felt less close and less committed to them in the expectancy violation than control condition. These doubts also magnified as initial satisfaction decreased. Despite having greater reason to prioritize the pursuit of safety within their relationship, less satisfied perceivers in the expectancy violation conditions nonetheless pursued value. Less satisfied perceivers reported feeling even closer and more committed to their partner in the expectancy violation than control condition. This doubt-defying, meaning-restorative response also increased in intensity as initial satisfaction decreased. The conviction expressed in the expectancy violation conditions truly was compensatory. When the world seemed uncertain, people in less satisfied relationships compensated for their relationship’s greater seeming fragility with strengthened commitment. They doubled down on dependence to make sense of life.

FIGURE 6.2 Meaning Threats Motivate Less Satisfied People to Express Compensatory Conviction

So let’s recap. In the self-affirmation experiments, engaging the symbolic pursuit of a superordinate important life value motivated people low in self-esteem to eschew safety for the pursuit of value. In the expectancy violation experiments, thwarting the desire to perceive a meaningful and orderly world similarly motivated people low in relationship satisfaction to prioritize value. These research programs make it clear that goal pursuits outside the relationship can reverse the usual lock safety has over the pursuit of value. We now turn to relationship circumstances that have comparable power to shift the equilibrium point of the risk regulation balance decidedly in value’s favor.

The self-affirmation and expectancy violation experiments reveal conditions outside the relationship that motivate vulnerable people to prioritize value over safety. In these experiments, transcendent goals inject themselves into the relationship, infusing value goal pursuits with added momentum to drive behavior. In daily relationship life, well-meaning experimenters are not always around to prompt vulnerable people (or anyone else) to eschew safety for the pursuit of value. Fortunately, increasing interdependence often gains the natural potential to decouple value from safety goal pursuits when it is left to its own devices. As we will see, justifying individual acts of caring and commitment can create a self-perpetuating momentum that gradually shifts the equilibrium point of the risk regulation balance in value’s decided favor.

Behavior creates the psychological impetus to construct its justification (Brickman, 1987; Harmon-Jones, Harmon-Jones, & Levy, 2015). Arya’s prior acts of caring laid the foundation for future responsiveness by motivating her to believe that Aaron was worth it. Through this self-perpetuating cycle, investments of caring and conviction in the partner’s value become progressively intertwined over time (Rusbult & Van Lange, 2003; Wieselquist, Rusbult, Foster, & Agnew, 1999). As we will see, this cycle reaches a motivational tipping point once people have invested so much of themselves in caring that they cannot afford to question their conviction in their partner’s value. For the highly invested, conviction is no longer not just an end in itself. It also affords a central means for satisfying the relationship-transcendent goal to be a valuable person leading a sensible and meaningful life (Brickman, 1987). Arya’s investment in her marriage, including her hopes for its future, her willingness to put her career aside for Aaron, and her immersion in Aaron’s family, represent everything personally that could be lost if she let herself question her convictions. It is this personal investment in conviction that allows value to take safety’s place as a monopolizing goal pursuit. Indeed, Arya’s marriage has now become so important to her that she is motivated to emphasize how much she can trust Aaron.

Such a qualitative shift in conviction happens as partners become increasingly emotionally intimate and progressively less able to separate themselves from their relationship (Lydon & Linardatos, 2012). Scholars use the term “relationship-specific identification” to capture commitment’s transformation from a simple evaluation of the relationship to an evaluation of the self within the relationship (Linardatos & Lydon, 2011). Arya is now “identified” with her relationship; her marriage is now part of who she is and she could not change her mind about Aaron without fundamentally shaking her sense of herself and her life. Once commitment to the partner becomes self-defining, protecting the self requires protecting the relationship. In fact, the relationship-identified do not find personal comfort in distancing themselves from their partner in risky situations. Questioning the partner’s value actually threatens self-esteem and hurts more than the transgression that provoked it (Lydon & Linardatos, 2012).

With such a transformation in what it means to be hurt, safety can takes a back seat to value because the pursuit of value goals is both self- and relationship-protective for the relationship-identified. This allows relationship maintenance in threatening situations to become automatic and functionally independent from trust. For instance, people who are highly identified with their relationship automatically turn their attention away from attractive and available alternative partners (Linardatos & Lydon, 2011). Simply priming generic thoughts about the partner also motivates the relationship-identified to respond more constructively to their partner’s transgressions (Linardatos & Lydon, 2011). People who are more identified with their relationship even compensate and evaluate their partner more positively when told that their partner’s values about having a baby with Down’s syndrome differ from their own (Auger, Hurley, & Lydon, 2016). People who have already invested a lot in caring for their partner also misperceive their partner’s behavior as being more supportive than it was (Lemay & Neal, 2013, 2014). They blame themselves when their partner disappoints them, deciding they simply did not communicate their needs clearly enough (Lemay & Melville, 2014). Furthermore, even low self-esteem people who include their partner as part of their identity resist devaluing their partner when faced by the possibility of being hurt by their partner’s transgressions or negative behavior (Baker & McNulty, 2013).

The investments of caring that build relationship-specific identification usually occur gradually as relationships develop over time. However, it is also possible to rapidly accelerate interdependence in the lab and invest people in caring for a new partner. In such formative relationships, being personally invested motivates people to defend investment by exaggerating evidence of safety (Lemay & Clark, 2015). People who have already taken the risk of caring for a new partner convince themselves that partner is safe to approach after the fact of their responsiveness. Rather than being a motivational priority in its own right, safety becomes a temporary means to value’s end.

Lemay and Clark (2008) made this point through their research on the projection of communal responsiveness. These authors reason that people justify their own investment in caring behaviors by projecting similarly caring motivations on to the recipient of their responsiveness. In one experiment, unacquainted participants reported in pairs to the laboratory for a study of social interaction (Lemay & Clark, 2008). In the “personal investment” condition, the researchers quickly escalated investment in this new relationship by instructing participants to behave in a positive and responsive way to the other participant. In the control condition, the target participant was instructed to behave neutrally. Then the pairs interacted. Participants instructed to be responsive reported greater attraction to their partner than controls, suggesting greater personal investment in this new relationship. Participants instructed to be responsive also justified this greater investment by projecting their own responsiveness on to their partner. They perceived their partner as behaving more responsively toward them (as compared to controls).

Significant transition points in the relationship, such as moving in together, marrying, or parenting a child, also quickly escalate personal investment in the relationship, intensifying the necessity to put value pursuits ahead of safety. Gagne and Lydon (2001) mimicked such a goal-transforming transition in the lab. They asked dating participants about to graduate from college to contemplate the future of their relationship. Participants in the “investment” condition devised a plan of action for maintaining their relationship in the future, adopting an implemental mindset that treated commitment as a foregone conclusion. Participants then rated their partner’s status relative to the typical partner on physical attractiveness, intelligence, warmth, and sense of humor. Invested participants justified the decision they had just imagined implementing in their life. They exaggerated their partner’s value relative to controls who had not had a mindset invoked, seeing their partner as even more superior to the typical partner than they had thought.

When commitment escalates markedly in real life, personally treating it as a foregone and unassailably sound decision also forecasts the relationship’s fate. For instance, people cement the “rightness” of impending commitments by projecting their own responsiveness on to their partner. In a longitudinal study reported by Lemay and Clark (2008), people who were about to be married reported on their own motivation to be responsive to their partner (e.g., “How far would you be willing to go to help your spouse?”) and their partner’s motivation to be responsive to them (e.g., “How far would your spouse be willing to go to help you?”). Two years after marriage, they completed the same measures again. This allowed the researchers to identify who cemented their investment in caring for their partner by exaggerating their partner’s reciprocal motivation to care for them. People who initially reported stronger motivations to care for their partner justified and protected this investment by exaggerating their partner’s later caring and responsiveness to them. These invested participants decided they had to be safe in their partner’s hands because they were already committed to caring for their partner. They compromised safety and increased actual vulnerability by assuming rather than ensuring safety. However, doing so helped guarantee they would not have any reason to question the meaning and value inherent in treating their partner responsively in the future. Those invested participants who projected their caring on to their partner behaved more responsively through the tribulations of their marriage’s initial years.

The priority newlyweds put on personally investing in commitment even when it makes them less safe also forecasts marital fate. Schoebi, Karney, and Bradbury (2012) measured personal intentions to maintain commitment in a sample of newlyweds (e.g., “It makes me feel good to sacrifice for my partner”; “My marriage must often take a back seat to other interests of mine”). Then they observed how constructively couples behaved during the discussion of a marital problem and they tracked marital satisfaction and relationship stability. Newlyweds who were personally invested in doing whatever it took to protect their commitments did just that. Women with stronger intentions to maintain their commitment risked being hurt in conflict situations. They behaved visibly more constructively while discussing a serious marital problem, seeking greater closeness to their partner despite the risks. Newlyweds with stronger intentions to maintain their commitments also reported greater satisfaction later after four years and they were also less likely to divorce after 11 years (Schoebi et al., 2012).

The research we just reviewed reveals how being invested in caring for the partner can tip the equilibrium point of the risk regulation balance in value’s decided favor. However, we still need to resolve the puzzle that introduced this chapter. How did a low self-esteem Arya come to invest enough in caring for Aaron to set aside her temptation to keep safe and maintain a self-protective distance? Answering this question takes us back to transactive goal pursuits and the role Aaron’s responsive behavior ultimately played in nurturing Arya’s investment in caring for him.

Partners in interdependent relationships can catch, satiate, and switch goal pursuits (Fitzsimons et al., 2015). Because Arya’s goal pursuits occur alongside Aaron’s goal pursuits, his pursuit of value could suppress her conflicting pursuit of safety. Such partner goal transmission could conceivably happen through multiple mechanisms. Being motivated to protect his investment in caring for Arya might motivate Aaron to forgive her transgressions, benevolence that she might feel obliged to reciprocate. Aaron might also make big and small sacrifices for her, practicing a communal relationship norm that limits conflicts and occasions where Arya feels vulnerable enough to distance. However, Aaron’s greatest power to shift his partner’s goal pursuits may reside in the power his own responsive behavior has to change his value to Arya without her necessarily even realizing her investment has increased.

The possibility for such implicit influence and goal contagion brings us back to the automatic partner attitudes that underlie trust (see Chapter 3). People develop more or less positive automatic attitudes through experience interacting and living with their partner. Being treated with greater care and responsiveness conditions more positive automatic attitudes toward the partner, whereas being treated with less care and responsiveness conditions more negative automatic attitudes (Murray et al., 2010; Murray, Gomillion, et al., 2013). Because automatic partner attitudes summarize the history of the partner’s behavior, they probably also encapsulate the partner’s predominant goal pursuits. Arya’s highly positive automatic attitude toward Aaron captures his long history of responsive behavior and the strong behavioral priority he put on the pursuit of value. Such a positive automatic attitude not only signals that Aaron is safe to approach (Chapter 3), but it also suggests that he is worth keeping (Murray et al., 2010). Such an implicit investment in Aaron’s value might just be enough to motivate Arya’s caring and nurturing behavior in situations that tempt her to self-protect.

To explore this possibility in our research program on automatic partner attitudes, we targeted people who normally prioritize safety goal pursuits in risky situations – those who are low in self-esteem (Murray et al., 2015) or self-regulatory capacity (Finkel & Campbell, 2001; Murray, Gomillion, et al., 2013). In one of these studies, we had married couples complete an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure automatic partner attitudes and a 14-day diary study to measure safety and value goal pursuits in everyday interaction (see Chapter 3 for a detailed description of the IAT). Each day participants reported on their trust in their partner’s caring, their partner’s supportive and communal and rejecting and selfish behavior toward them, and their supportive and communal and rejecting and selfish behavior toward their partner.

We originally reasoned that highly positive automatic partner attitudes allow vulnerable people to feel safer in risky situations. Rewriting these hypotheses in terms of partner goal transmission suggests a further possibility. Because automatic attitudes are grounded in the partner’s prior goal pursuits (Murray et al., 2010), they should have the power to transmit the goals the partner prioritizes to the perceiver. This grounding in experience should give highly positive automatic partner attitudes the power to transmit a resilient and committed partner’s personal investment in caring to a vulnerable perceiver in need of a motivational “assist” to set safety goals aside. In other words, a low self-esteem Arya could catch Aaron’s value goal pursuits because his past acts of caring conditioned her highly positive automatic attitude toward him, implicitly increasing her personal investment in him and hardening her resolve to care for him.

Regardless of the mechanism, the findings are clear. When vulnerable people possess more positive automatic partner attitudes, safety goal pursuits no longer monopolize perception and behavior in risky situations. This is just as true for people who are low in self-esteem as it is for people who are low in self-regulatory capacity.

Consider a classic means of restoring safety – being vigilant and quick to perceive rejection in risky situations. Vulnerable people who possess more positive automatic attitudes are actually insensitive to rejection when they have just been hurt and have every reason to prioritize safety. Figure 6.3 presents the rejection-sensitivity findings for low and high self-esteem people in high-risk situations in our diary study (i.e., days after participants reported personally and unusually high levels of uncertainty about their partner’s caring). Low self-esteem people with more positive automatic attitudes perceived their partner as less rejecting and selfish on days after they had been personally hurt by their partner (relative to low self-esteem people with more negative automatic attitudes).

We found a conceptually parallel effect on rejection sensitivity for people low in working memory, which imposes a cognitive constraint on self-regulatory strength (Murray, Lupien, & Seery, 2012). We manipulated the risk of partner rejection by leading experimental participants to believe their partner had compiled a lengthy list of their faults. Control participants had no such apprehension (see Chapter 3 for details on this manipulation). While this was happening, we measured psychophysiological threat reactions (as indexed through the heart working less efficiently). Next, we asked participants to give a speech about their career plans while their partner watched and report how they expected their partner to react to their speech (while we continued to measure psychophysiological threat reactions). For the self-regulation-impaired, more positive automatic attitudes fostered insensitivity to perceiving rejection in the face of their partner’s overtly rejecting behavior. When people low in working-memory capacity had more positive automatic partner attitudes, their hearts worked more efficiently, pumping more blood with less arterial resistance, indicating greater bodily resilience (relative to people low in working-memory capacity with more negative automatic attitudes). People low in working-memory capacity with more positive automatic attitudes also expected their partner to be more approving of their speech even though their partner had just rejected them (Murray et al., 2012).

FIGURE 6.3 Low Self-Esteem People with More Positive Automatic Partner Attitudes Evidence Less Rejection Sensitivity. (Adapted from Murray, S. L., Gomillion, S., Holmes, J. G., & Harris, B. L. (2015). Inhibiting self-protection in romantic relationships: Automatic partner attitudes as a resource for low self-esteem people. Social Psychology and Personality Science, 6, 173–182. Copyright Sage Publications; adapted with permission.)

FIGURE 6.4 Low Self-Esteem People with More Positive Automatic Partner Attitudes Evidence Less Defensive Distancing. (Adapted from Murray, S. L., Gomillion, S., Holmes, J. G., & Harris, B. L. (2015). Inhibiting self-protection in romantic relationships: Automatic partner attitudes as a resource for low self-esteem people. Social Psychology and Personality Science, 6, 173–182. Copyright Sage Publications; adapted with permission.)

Across these studies, vulnerable people with more positive automatic attitudes eschewed safety pursuits. By minimizing the possibility of rejection, they behaved as though restoring trust in their partner was more important than keeping safe from being hurt. Further findings from the diary study suggest that more positive automatic partner attitudes allow vulnerable people to do more than simply eschew safety in high-risk situations. By suppressing safety goals, highly positive automatic attitudes also release and facilitate value goal pursuits. Figure 6.4 presents prototypic findings for such value preservation. It captures the results for behavioral distancing in high-risk situations for people low versus high in self-esteem in the diary study. Low self-esteem people with more positive automatic attitudes sustained connection in risky situations. They engaged in less rejecting and selfish behavior on days after they had been personally hurt (relative to people low in self-esteem with more negative automatic attitudes). In fact, people low in self-esteem with more positive automatic attitudes responded just as constructively to being hurt as high self-esteem people did! A parallel effect emerged for people low in self-regulatory capacity. When the self-regulation-impaired possessed more positive automatic attitudes, they suppressed the temptation to distance. They drew closer to partners who had just rejected them, prioritizing value over safety goal pursuits (Murray, Gomillion, et al., 2013).

So, let’s recap. In high-risk situations, vulnerable people who are normally preoccupied with safety instead prioritize value – when, and only when, they possess more positive automatic attitudes toward their partner. But does this mean they are actually catching their partner’s goal pursuits? The diary data suggest that this might just be the case. Figure 6.5 presents the rejecting and selfish behavior of the partners of low and high self-esteem people on high-risk days. The partners of low self-esteem people with more positive automatic attitudes engaged in less rejecting and selfish behavior on days after people with low self-esteem had felt more hurt. A quick comparison between Figures 6.4 and 6.5 reveals that low self-esteem people with more positive automatic attitudes practically mirror their partner’s behavior, suggesting they might have caught their partner’s goals.

FIGURE 6.5 The Partners of Low Self-Esteem People with More Positive Automatic Partner Attitudes Also Evidence Less Defensive Distancing. (Adapted from Murray, S. L., Gomillion, S., Holmes, J. G., & Harris, B. L. (2015). Inhibiting self-protection in romantic relationships: Automatic partner attitudes as a resource for low self-esteem people. Social Psychology and Personality Science, 6, 173–182. Copyright Sage Publications; adapted with permission.)

In this chapter, we explored personal and relationship contexts that can tip the equilibrium point of the risk regulation balance in value’s decided favor. We described how safety and value goals operate as part of an interconnected goal system. Within this goal system, relationship-transcendent pursuits for self-integrity and a purposeful and meaningful life can infuse and transform relationship-specific goal pursuits.

When ongoing situations make the relationship a central means for satisfying transcendent goals, value gains monopolizing power over safety in goal pursuit. Simple acts of self-affirmation immerse low self-esteem people in the pursuit of a value-driven life, allowing them to forgo safety in risky situations and connect. Conversely, thwarting the goal for a sensible and meaningful world by violating expectancies motivates vulnerable people to prioritize value. When the world does not turn out as expected, people who are uncertain of their relationship’s meaning clarify and solidify conviction, drawing closer in the face of doubt. For the relationship-identified, interdependence reaches a tipping point where the relationship becomes a central source of personal meaning and value in life as a whole. At this tipping point, protecting conviction becomes monopolizing and the relationship-identified even distort evidence of safety and embellish their value to their partner to avoid questioning their partner’s value to them.

Not everyone reaches such a tipping point. For the most fortunate of the safety-conscious, highly positive automatic partner attitudes transmit one partner’s greater personal investment in caring to the more vulnerable partner. However, in some relationships, safety retains its monopoly over value even when circumstances dictate it could and should lose such a stranglehold. Skyler is a case in point. Alex’s birth should have motivated her to clarify her convictions and increase her personal investment in Walt. His birth instead threatened her investment because she could not let safety concerns go long enough to see the value Walt brought to her life. In Chapter 7, we turn to the reality constraints the person, partner, and relationship impose on goal pursuit. As we will see, safety and value goal pursuits can lose their natural compensatory balance or even completely backfire when their pursuit is not sensitive to reality’s affordances.