Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology.
Department of Social Psychology.
Emotion. 2022 Feb;22(1):81-99. doi: 10.1037/emo0001055. Epub 2022 Jan 6.
People in romantic relationships tend to have positive feelings toward their partner and want their relationship to last. However, maintaining a romantic relationship over time is challenging, and people can often experience mixed and conflicting feelings (i.e., ambivalence) toward their significant other. While research has identified the serious consequences that ambivalence can have for personal and relational well-being, very little is known about the factors that can lead people to experience ambivalence in relationships. The present work examines how extradyadic desire (i.e., desire for someone other than the partner), a common difficulty people face in the context of monogamy, is a situation in which people feel more ambivalent toward their partner. In three studies ( = 1,178) using experimental, daily diary, and longitudinal approaches, we find that feelings of desire for an attractive alternative increase ambivalence toward the current partner, above and beyond how much people actually value their partner, and that this has short- and long-term negative consequences for personal and relational well-being. Furthermore, while most people could identify an attractive alternative in their life, desire for the alternative-rather than just their presence-seems to play a stronger role in increasing ambivalence. This work highlights the emotional processes through which attractive alternatives pose a threat to romantic relationships and the role that ambivalence plays in daily life and over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
处于浪漫关系中的人们往往对伴侣持有积极的情感，并希望关系能够持久。然而，随着时间的推移，维持一段浪漫关系具有挑战性，人们往往对自己的另一半会产生复杂和矛盾的感觉（即矛盾心理）。尽管研究已经确定了矛盾心理可能对个人和关系幸福产生的严重后果，但人们对导致关系中产生矛盾心理的因素知之甚少。本研究探讨了外生欲望（即对伴侣以外的人的欲望）是如何成为一种情况的，在这种情况下，人们会对伴侣感到更加矛盾心理。通过三个研究（= 1178），采用实验、日常日记和纵向方法，我们发现，对有吸引力的替代对象的欲望感会增加对当前伴侣的矛盾心理，超出了人们对伴侣的实际重视程度，并且这对个人和关系幸福会产生短期和长期的负面影响。此外，虽然大多数人都能在生活中找到一个有吸引力的替代对象，但对替代对象的欲望——而不仅仅是他们的存在——似乎在增加矛盾心理方面发挥了更大的作用。这项研究强调了有吸引力的替代对象对浪漫关系构成威胁的情感过程，以及矛盾心理在日常生活和随着时间的推移所扮演的角色。
