Forbidding Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

It's no surprise that partners who are less interested in alternatives to their current relationship partners turn out to be more satisfied with those relationships. If you don't think the grass is greener, then you won't be as interested in hopping the fence. What might come as a bigger surprise are the findings of a group of psychologists at the University of Kentucky and Florida State suggesting how one should react to a partner whose eyes (and potentially, hearts) are wandering: let them ogle.

They root their theory in an old idea that has received strong recent empirical support: forbidden fruit tastes sweeter. When our desires are externally prohibited, desires grow stronger. Psychologists call this "reactance". When prohibitions are imposed upon us we tend to interpret such impositions as an affront to our liberty. In response we come to value the forbidden more than we otherwise would. This is why we drive even faster than we were previously going after we pass by police cars on the highway. Police going to tell me how fast I can drive? I don't think so.

Sometimes such prohibition can benefit relationships (e.g. Romeo and Juliet). But when you catch your boyfriend doing the old "oh I'm just stretching my neck" routine, how should you react? Scolding such action might make that passerby, and perhaps others as well, seem more desirable. This is the possibility the researchers sought to test.

They brought participants who were in relationships of over 1 month into the lab and told them they would be engaging in a timed categorization task. A letter (E or F) would appear on the screen and they were to press the corresponding key as quickly as they could on the keyboard. Simple enough. But before the letter appeared, two pictures (one of an attractive opposite-sex person and an average looking opposite-sex person) were flashed on the screen, and then the letter appeared in the same location as one of these pictures. In the experimental condition, the letter appeared in the location of the average-looking picture 80% of the time, subtly directing participants' attention towards those pictures (and away from the attractive alternatives), while in the control condition letter placement was random. Now, having limited participants' attention away from the hotties, how would participants judge the quality of their actual relationships?

Turns out that just diverting people's attention through this subtle experimental manipulation (of which participants were completely unaware) made them less satisfied with and committed to their partners and even created more positive attitudes towards cheating on them! It also increased memory for the attractive alternatives (i.e. participants in the experimental condition were better able to recall which attractive pictures they had seen during the task), and caused people to pay more attention to attractive others in a future experimental task.

And lest you think this effect only applies to men, women composed a majority of the sample and there were no gender differences in these effects.

So, though the degree to which we only have eyes for our partners is indeed a reliable predictor of satisfaction, when those eyes wander whipping them back into place won't cause the kind of love-struck myopia you hope for. Indeed, at best their eyes will be back on you, but their hearts will be miles away. This is not to say that apathy will make your relationship better. It won't. But eye-wandering appears to be a symptom of a troubled relationship as opposed to a root cause.