In the Eye of the Betrothed

Abstract

People in monogamous relationships can experience a conflict when they interact with an attractive individual. They may have a desire to romantically pursue the new person, while wanting to be faithful to their partner. How do people manage the threat that attractive alternatives present to their relationship goals? We suggest that one way people defend their relationships against attractive individuals is by perceiving the individual as less attractive. In two studies, using a novel visual matching paradigm, we found support for a perceptual downgrading effect. People in relationships perceived threatening attractive individuals as less attractive than did single participants. The effect was exacerbated among participants who were highly satisfied with their current relationships. The studies provide evidence for a perceptual bias that emerges to protect long-term goals. We discuss the findings within the context of a broader theory of motivated perception in the service of self-control.

Keywords

relationships self-control self-regulation motivated perception

People in exclusive romantic relationships may sometimes find themselves in trouble. Although they may have goals to stay faithful to their current partner, as Bobby Darin sings, “The world is full of beautiful things. Beautiful people, too.” Indeed, over the course of a lifetime, people meet upward of 10,000 new people (Ask.com, n.d.). Given the sheer number of new encounters, it is likely people will at times interact with individuals that they find interesting and attractive. In such cases, people may ponder the possibility of sharing their lives (or their beds) with someone other than their current partner. One study of people in monogamous relationships found that 80% of women and 98% of men admitted to having at least one sexual fantasy about someone other than their current partner in just the past 2 months (Hicks & Leitenberg, 2001). For people in monogamous relationships, other attractive individuals can present a potential threat to the goal of maintaining commitment to their current partner.

Despite temptations to pursue attractive others, many relationships manage to stay intact. According to recent census data, Americans are staying married longer than they have in years (Morello, 2011). Seventy-five percent of couples who married after 1990 celebrated a 10-year anniversary, and more than half the nation’s married couples have been together at least 15 years. Harold and Edna Owings, recently named “America’s longest married couple,” just celebrated 82 years married. How do people manage to stay committed to their partners in the face of temptation? The present research explores the role of one self-regulatory tool—motivated perceptual representations—in maintaining relationship commitment.

Managing Self-Control Conflicts

When an enticing immediate desire conflicts with an important long-term goal, people are said to experience a self-control conflict (Fishbach & Converse, 2010; Fishbach & Shen, 2014; Mischel, 1974; Rachlin, 2000; Trope & Fishbach, 2000). Importantly, during self-control conflicts, people are simultaneously motivated to act on a temptation and to maintain progress toward a long-term goal, but the two motives are incompatible (Fujita, 2011). Succumbing to the short-term indulgence precludes progress toward the long-term goal. And choosing to act in ways that serve the long-term goal involves foregoing the short-term temptation. Such may sometimes be the dilemma for people in monogamous relationships. On one hand, they want to remain faithful to their current romantic partners, but on the other they may want to explore their romantic feelings for another individual. For people in committed, monogamous relationships, the two courses of action are mutually exclusive.

How do people resist temptations that pose threats to their long-term goals? Research suggests people employ numerous strategies to help manage temptations. For example, people who focused and elaborated on the long-term consequences of giving in to a temptation, rather than the short-term rewards, experienced reduced food and cigarette cravings (Kober, Kross, Mischel, Hart, & Ochsner, 2010). Individuals who semantically framed resistance to a temptation in terms of empowered “I don’t” statements (e.g., “I don’t eat chocolate”) instead of “I can’t” statements (e.g., “I can’t eat chocolate”) were better able to resist temptations (Patrick & Hagtvedt, 2012). People who adopted high-level, abstract mind-sets were less likely to choose immediate over delayed outcomes and performed better at behavioral tasks that required self-control (Fujita & Han, 2009; Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006).

In addition to these explicit strategies that people may consciously adopt, people also evince implicit self-control responses that deploy outside of conscious awareness and require few cognitive resources (e.g., Fishbach, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2003; Fishbach & Shah, 2006; Moskowitz, Gollwitzer, Wasel, & Schaal, 1999). For example, people exhibited automatic implicit behavioral tendencies to approach goals and avoid temptations, as measured through faster motor movements directed toward and away from the body, respectively (Fishbach & Shah, 2006). Moreover, successful self-regulators demonstrated an automatic activation of a goal in response to an encounter with a temptation (Fishbach et al., 2003). Subliminally primed temptation words spontaneously activated words associated with goals, suggesting implicit process may bias cognitions so that encountering proximal temptations actually triggers thoughts of distal goals. To the growing body of work exploring implicit cognitive processes that predict and promote effective self-control, we add an additional implicit self-control response: motivated perceptual representations. We suggest people’s efforts to manage temptations may be reflected in the way they perceive temptations in their environment. In the present work, we capitalize on a well-documented regulatory process that emerges during self-control conflicts to see whether there are perceptual routes to self-control.

Devaluing Temptations

When people encounter an enticing temptation, one way to reduce its motivational pull is to devalue the temptation. In other words, people may explicitly or implicitly evaluate the temptation as less appealing. Indeed, items that otherwise are evaluated positively, are evaluated negatively when they conflict with goals. For example, chocolate bars were evaluated as less appealing among people with goals to maintain good health (Myrseth, Fishbach, & Trope, 2009) and nonacademic concepts such as movies were implicitly evaluated more negatively when people were primed with achievement goals (Fishbach, Zhang, & Trope, 2010). Moreover, devaluation is particularly likely to occur when a temptation is available; available temptations threaten goals more than unavailable temptations, leading people to counteract the threat by devaluing the temptation (Myrseth et al., 2009). Devaluing a temptation helps to decrease the strength of the motivation to pursue it.

People use devaluation strategies to manage romantic self-control conflicts. For example, in a classic study, people in highly committed relationships evaluated attractive alternatives less favorably by disparaging their personal qualities, such as their intelligence, their sense of humor, and their appearance (Johnson & Rusbult, 1989). Given that physical attractiveness is one of the strongest determinants of the likelihood of pursuing a potential partner (Li, Bailey, Kenrick, & Linsenmeier, 2002), physical appearance is a likely candidate for devaluation. Indeed, when asked to explicitly evaluate the attractiveness of others, people in committed relationships rate the individuals as less attractive than do single individuals or people who are not committed to their relationships (Johnson & Rusbult, 1989; Karremans & Verwijmeren, 2008; Lydon, Fitzsimons, & Naidoo, 2003; Lydon, Meana, Sepinwall, Richards, & Mayman, 1999; Meyer, Berkman, Karremans, & Lieberman, 2011; Ritter, Karremans, & van Schie, 2010). Moreover, the devaluation effect is strongest when the other individual is particularly threatening to one’s current relationship. Devaluation occurs to a stronger degree when the individual is actually physically attractive (Johnson & Rusbult, 1989), expresses interest in the participant (Lydon et al., 1999), or is simply available as a romantic partner (Bazzini & Shaffer, 1999).

Although much of the initial research on devaluation of attractive others employed methods that directly asked participants to judge, rate, or evaluate an individual’s attractiveness, a second generation of research has begun to explore more implicit forms of devaluation—and related behavioral responses—of attractive alternatives. For example, in one study, researchers used a clever reverse correlation paradigm to capture individuals’ memories of the faces of attractive others (Karremans, Dotsch, & Corneille, 2011). When asked to remember an attractive face they had seen, people in committed relationships mentally represented the face of the individual as less attractive than did single individuals. Other studies have found that individuals in relationships are less likely to behaviorally mimic (Karremans & Verwijmeren, 2008) or visually attend to (Maner, Gailliot, & Miller, 2009) attractive others. In addition, research has linked the derogation of attractive others to increased activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), right VLPFC (RVLPFC), and posterior dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (pDMPFC), areas of the brain known to engage in both implicit and deliberate emotion regulation (Meyer et al., 2011).

To this growing body of work exploring implicit processes that help to manage the threat attractive individuals may present to committed relationships, we add an additional implicit relationship maintenance tool: motivated perceptual representations. We are interested in whether there are perceptual biases that underlie, or occur in addition to, cognitive evaluations of attractiveness. We test whether people in committed relationships perceive attractive individuals differently, seeing a less attractive version of the individual than do single participants. We call this perceptual downgrading.

Studying perceptual representations is particularly important because people have inordinate faith in their visual experiences (e.g., Andrade, 2011). The way people think they see the world is treated as seemingly infallible input into later cognitive and behavioral decisions. Indeed, people first create renderings of the information their world contains—or form perceptual representations—and those representations then serve as input for further cognition and subsequent action. Studying perceptual representations can help capture early-stage processes that guide people’s decisions about whether and how to act during self-control conflicts.

As a general interest in implicit regulatory processes emerges, our research is the first to tease apart whether devaluation effects represent implicit differences in the way people evaluate or judge individuals’ attractiveness, or whether there are lower level differences in the way people perceptually represent the individual. In the current studies, we used a unique morphing paradigm and a visual matching task to go beyond current devaluation research by (a) testing an implicit perceptual measure of devaluation; (b) reducing the likelihood of alternative explanations such as social desirability, response bias, and demand effects; and (c) conceptualizing downgrading biases not only as relative differences between groups of participants but also as differences from the individual’s true, objective face.

Pilot Studies

To design an implicit measure of perceptual downgrading, we adapted a paradigm employed by Epley and Whitchurch (2008). In the original paradigm, the researchers used facial morphing software to create less and more attractive versions of participants’ own faces. Participants’ task was to choose the face, out of the lineup of morphed faces, that was their real face. In our studies, we adapted the paradigm to capture participants’ perceptions of other people. We first describe the development of the morphed stimuli. We then briefly report the results of two pilot studies designed to test the implicit nature of the task, the construct validity of our measure of perceived attractiveness, and the amount of ambiguity in our visual matching measure.

Development of Stimuli

Using Abrasoft Fantamorph software, we morphed several male and female “target” faces for use in our experimental studies. For each face, we followed the same procedure. We first morphed the target’s face with a highly attractive exemplar, a composite image of a several dozen faces (obtained from http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/phil_Fak_II/Psychologie/Psy_II/beautycheck/english/index.htm). We then morphed the target’s face with a highly unattractive exemplar, a photograph of an individual who suffers from craniofacial syndrome (obtained from www.craniofacial.net). The morphing process matches points on the target’s face with identical points on the exemplar face then blends the features together. The procedure produces a continuum of images that range from 100% target face to 100% exemplar face, with any set number of increments in between. Thus, a 50% morph with the attractive exemplar produced an image that is half of the target’s face and half of the attractive exemplar’s face on all matched, critical points.

For use in our experimental studies, we extracted a series of photographs that represented the target face morphed at 10% increments with the unattractive and attractive faces, respectively, up to the 50/50 morph (see Figure 1). In the figure, an image labeled +20% reflects a face that contains 20% of the attractive face and 80% of the target’s face, whereas an image labeled −20% represents a face that contains 20% of the unattractive face and 80% of the target individual’s face. This procedure produced 11 faces: five faces morphed with the attractive exemplar (up to +50%), five faces morphed with the unattractive exemplar (down to −50%), and one face representing the target’s original, unmorphed face. As a result of the morphing process, the faces vary on things like symmetry and evenness of skin tone, qualities universally associated with attractiveness (Johnston & Franklin, 1993; Perrett, 2010; Swami & Furnham, 2008). For our studies, we mixed the 11 images into a random array of faces and asked participants to try to choose the target’s true face out of the array.

Figure 1.

Development of stimuli.

Pilot Study 1

In the first pilot study, we had two important goals. First, we wanted to test whether participants explicitly realized the morphed faces differed in attractiveness. If participants are aware that attractiveness differs between faces, then the measure may be more likely to reflect an explicit judgment process than an implicit perceptual one. Explicit awareness also may make our measure more subject to demand effects or social desirability bias. We expected that participants would not recognize that the faces were varying in attractiveness, reflecting the more implicit nature of our task. Second, we wanted to test the construct validity of our measure by seeing whether participants preferred the faces that had been morphed with the attractive exemplar. We expected that even though they could not articulate that the faces differed in attractiveness, when asked to choose the best or most flattering photo of the individual they would choose faces that had been morphed with the attractive exemplar.

Method

Fifty-four Amazon Mechanical Turk workers (59% female, M_age = 36.31, SD = 14.05) received monetary compensation (US$.25) to complete a face evaluation task. First, participants saw four arrays of faces, two male arrays and two female arrays. Each array contained 11 faces; five faces were the target morphed with an attractive exemplar, five were the target morphed with an unattractive exemplar, and one was the original unmorphed face (see Figure 2). While looking at all four arrays, participants were asked to report anything they noticed about the faces. Research assistants blind to hypothesis coded participants’ responses for whether they mentioned that the faces varied in attractiveness.

Figure 2.

Example of random array of faces used in Pilot Study 1.

Next participants saw each of the four arrays separately. While looking at each array, participants chose the photo that they preferred, the one that they believed was the best or most flattering version of the person’s face.

Results

When asked what they noticed about the face arrays, in our sample of 54 individuals, not one participant mentioned that some faces were more attractive than others. Many of the participants did seem to notice that although the faces were very similar something was changing (e.g., “something in their eyes is different from one photo to the next,” “slightly different expressions on each face,” and “they are adjusted by fractions to be different”) but none articulated that the faces differed in attractiveness.

When asked to choose the face they preferred, however, participants consistently and reliably chose faces morphed with the attractive exemplar. All four arrays showed a very similar pattern of results. Collapsing across the four arrays, on average participants chose a face that was +33% (SD = 24.81) on the −50% to +50% scale. Figure 3 represents the proportion of individuals who chose each face, combined across the four arrays.

Figure 3.

Proportion of individuals who preferred each face in Pilot Study 1.

The results of the first pilot test provided support for the implicit nature of our measure. No participant seemed aware that the faces were differing on dimensions associated with attractiveness. However, providing support for the construct validity of our measure, when asked which was the image they preferred, participants overwhelmingly chose the photos morphed with the attractive exemplars.

Pilot Study 2

In Pilot Study 2, we designed and tested a novel visual matching task. In the original Epley and Whitchurch (2008) paradigm, participants saw an array of 11 faces and indicated which one was their own real face. In the moment, participants were not looking at their own face for comparison, so their choice was based on their beliefs about or memories of what their faces look like. In the present studies, we wanted to capture people’s true perceptual experiences of how attractive another person was, not their beliefs about or memories of attractiveness. So we adapted the original paradigm into a visual matching task. Participants saw the same array of 11 faces but they also saw an additional image in the top right corner (see Figure 4). This image was the target’s true, actual face. Participants’ task was to simply choose the face, out of the 11 choices, that matched this referent face.

Figure 4.

Visual matching task.

Because we put the referent face directly on the screen, we used Pilot Study 2 to make sure the task was not too easy. Ambiguity is a necessary precondition for motivated biases to emerge (Kunda, 1990). So we wanted to make sure we had some degree of error on our task and that everyone was not easily able to choose the face that matched the referent.

Method

Sixteen Amazon Mechanical Turk workers received monetary compensation (US$.25) to complete a face evaluation task (67% female, M_age = 31.6, SD = 10.65). Participants saw six arrays of faces, three arrays of males and three arrays of females, in which a target face was morphed at 7% increments with an attractive and an unattractive exemplar to produce 11 faces. The original referent photograph was also located on the screen in the top right corner. For each array, participants chose the face they believe matched the original face. They also reported how difficult it was to decide which was the person’s true face (1 = very difficult, 7 = very easy) and how confident they were that they chose the correct face (0% confident-100% confident).

Results

The pattern of results among the six arrays was very similar. For ease of interpretation, we present the analyses collapsed across the six arrays. As evidence of the difficulty of the task, across the trials the incorrect face was chosen 71.3% of the time. Of those incorrect choices, more attractive faces than the original were chosen 44.7% of the time, while less attractive faces were chosen 26.3% of the time, indicating a slight bias to see the referent faces as more attractive. On average, participants reported considerable difficulty choosing the correct face (M = 2.69, SD = 1.67), and reported being, on average, only about 50% confident (SD = 26.58) that they had chosen correctly.

The results of the second pilot study suggested the visual matching task was not too easy for participants. There was variance in the images participants chose, and participants’ subjective experience of the task was that it was difficult to choose correctly. This speaks to a degree of ambiguity in our task. It is this ambiguity that we hoped would allow for systematic biases to emerge when participants were motivated to protect their relationships.

Overview of Experimental Studies

In the next two studies, we tested whether people in relationships represented other attractive individuals as less attractive than did single participants, particularly when the individuals presented a potential threat to participants’ relationship maintenance goals. In Study 1, we manipulated the potential for another individual to serve as a threat to the relationship and tested whether participants in relationships saw the individual as less attractive than did single individuals. In Study 2, we replicated the effect while varying the manner in which we manipulated threat. We also extended the findings by exploring whether the effect was more pronounced for individuals more satisfied with their current partners.

Study 1

In Study 1, we tested whether people in relationships perceptually downgraded attractive individuals who posed a potential threat to their relationships. Participants learned they would work closely with an attractive individual. We manipulated threat by varying the individual’s romantic availability (Bazzini & Shaffer, 1999). Consistent with past research, we expected that attractive romantically available individuals would represent more of a threat to participants’ relationships than individuals who were already romantically attached.

Participants then completed a visual matching task in which we assessed their perceptions of the individual’s attractiveness. We expected perceptual downgrading to occur when participants were in a relationship and when the target presented a potential threat to their relationship (i.e., was single). That is, we expected that participants in relationships compared with single participants would perceive a single, attractive target as less attractive. When the target was described as already in a relationship, we expected no differences between participants who were single and those in relationships.

Method

Participants and procedures

In exchange for research credit or US$10, 131 heterosexual university undergraduates (75% female) participated in the experiment. We collected data over the course of 1 academic year. In the lab, participants learned that they would form initial impressions of, and would later work closely with, an opposite sex participant next door. In reality, no participant was actually seated next door. Participants first learned they would form initial impressions of the individual (hereby referred to as the target) by exchanging personal information with the target. Participants answered a few questions about themselves, including their hobbies, pet peeves, and things that made them nervous. The experimenter took their photographs with a digital camera.

While the experimenter ostensibly uploaded the information and photograph into the computer, participants completed a few filler questionnaires. Embedded among filler questions was a question that asked whether the participant was currently in a romantic relationship.

Next, participants read the personal information ostensibly written by the target. In actuality, this information was scripted. Every participant read that the target’s hobbies included “hanging with friends,” pet peeves included “losing cell phone reception in half of campus buildings,” and that “public speaking” was something that made the individual nervous. In a pretest, a separate group of university participants (n = 35) evaluated the profile and rated each piece of information in the profile as neutral to moderately positive.

We presented a photograph of the target in the top right corner of the profile. In a pretest, a separate group of participants (n = 41) evaluated the photographs and rated them to be of above average attractiveness. Within each gender, we used photographs of two different targets.

To induce a potential threat to participants’ relationship goals, we manipulated whether the target individual described himself or herself as romantically available. In the high threat condition (n = 66), the personal information sheet indicated the target was single. In the low threat condition (n = 65), the personal information sheet indicated the target was in a relationship.

Participants spent a few minutes alone reading about the target. Then they filled out an evaluation sheet, assessing the target on various personality characteristics such as how intelligent, fun, and reliable the target seemed. Next, the experimenter removed all materials and told the participant he or she would complete a “knowledge test” to assess what they had learned about the target. As an accuracy incentive, the experimenter explained that participants would have their name entered into a raffle for US$50 if they answered the questions correctly. Participants answered a few questions about the target’s profile, including the target’s hometown, name, and hobbies and pet peeves.

Then participants completed the visual matching task that assessed the primary dependent variable: perceptions of attractiveness of the target individual. At the top right corner of the computer screen, participants saw the target individual’s real photograph, the same photograph they had seen previously. The remainder of the screen contained 11 faces depicting slight variations of the target’s photographs, as described above. While one face depicted the target’s actual face as participants originally saw it, five faces depicted less attractive versions of the target’s face and five faces depicted more attractive versions. We instructed participants to choose the correct face from the options, using the photograph at the top as a referent. The photographs were randomly presented in one of three different arrays. Participants received unlimited time to make their decision. The primary dependent variable was the face participants chose.

After participants chose the face, they were given a survey to assess their opinions of the study so far, before (they believed) they would work closely with the target in an interactive task. They were asked several questions about the study, including what they believed the researchers were trying to test, any thoughts they had about the “knowledge test,” and anything else they wanted to comment on about the study so far. In other words, at this point participants were given an opportunity to offer information that suggested they knew that the faces varied in attractiveness, or that they guessed the true hypothesis of the experiment. No participant reported knowledge of these factors. Finally, participants were debriefed about the true nature of the study and thanked for their time.

Results

We coded the selected photograph according to the percent of attractive or unattractive face included in the morph. Thus, scores on the visual matching task could range from −50% (least attractive photograph) to +50% (most attractive photograph). The target’s actual photograph received a score of zero. Although we used two different target photographs within each target gender, there were no photo effects so the analyses are collapsed across photograph.

We predicted that being in a relationship and encountering a potentially threatening individual would lead to perceptual downgrading. To test this, we conducted a 2 (participant status: single, in a relationship) × 2 (target threat: low, high) ANOVA predicting perceptions of attractiveness.¹ There was a marginal main effect of target threat, F(1, 127) = 3.46, p = .07, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .03, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [.00, .10]. The low threat target, who was described as in a relationship, was perceived as marginally more attractive (M = 3.1%, SD = 9.0%) than the high threat target, who was described as single (M = 1.4%, SD = 10.8%). There was no main effect of participant relationship status, F(1, 127) = 2.70, p = .10 $η_{p}^{2}$ = .02, 95% CI = [.00, .09]. However, as expected, there was a significant interaction, F(1, 127) = 6.82, p = .01, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .05, 95% CI = [.003, .14]. As seen in Figure 5, participants in relationships who learned the target was single and therefore could serve as a potential threat to their relationship viewed the target as less attractive than participants in relationships who learned the target was in a relationship, t(127) = 2.76, p = .007, d = 0.82, 95% CI = [.29, 1.42], single participants who learned the target was in a relationship, t(127) = 2.51, p = .01, d = 0.67, 95% CI = [.14, 1.20], and single participants who learned the target was single, t(127) = 2.97, p = .003, d = 0.78, 95% CI = [.26, 1.31]. Moreover, whereas partnered participants’ perceptions of attractiveness differed depending on whether the target was in a relationship, single participants’ perceptions did not, t(127) = 0.64, p = .52, d = 0.14 95% CI = [−.29, .56].

Figure 5.

Perceived attractiveness as a function of participant relationship status and target threat in Studies 1 and 2.

Participants who encountered a potential threat to their romantic relationships showed evidence of perceptual downgrading. Even with a direct referent to compare with and a financial accuracy incentive, participants in relationships chose a less attractive face when trying to match the target’s photograph, suggesting they experienced the threatening target as less attractive than did other people. In addition, in contrast to many past studies demonstrating devaluation effects (e.g., Johnson & Rusbult, 1989; Lydon et al., 2003; Lydon et al., 1999; Meyer et al., 2011), we never explicitly asked participants about attractiveness during the task. In debriefing, no participant reported that he or she realized the faces varied on levels of attractiveness. Thus, it is unlikely that the effects were due to demand characteristics or social desirability concerns, and it is unlikely that the task recruited explicit cognitive strategies for devaluing others. Study 1 serves as preliminary evidence that when people are faced with conflict they may perceive temptations in less appealing ways, effectively “cooling” otherwise “hot” impulses that attractive others can present.

Study 2

The purpose of Study 2 was to replicate and extend the results of Study 1. If perceptual downgrading is a strategy that helps people protect their relationship goals from the threat of temptation, it should occur to a greater extent among people who are highly satisfied with their current partners. To test this, in Study 2, participants provided additional information about their current relationships. We expected that participants more satisfied with their current relationships would show the greatest degree of perceptual downgrading.

In Study 2, we manipulated threat to the relationship in a slightly different way. In the first study, we manipulated threat by describing the target as single or in a relationship. While the results of Study 1 are consistent with the hypothesis that participants presented with a threat to their goals engage in perceptual downgrading, a few alternative explanations are possible. Participants in relationships could have made inferences about single individuals’ attractiveness based on the fact that the individuals were not dating someone. Such perceptual downgrading would not have arisen as a result of motivations to protect their relationships but rather as a result of expectations or heuristics about attractiveness and dating status. However, an explanation based on expectations or heuristics is unlikely as participants in relationships and participants who are single would have equal access to such information. Another motivational explanation could be that people in relationships demonstrated a kind of in-group bias, evaluating people who shared their relationship status as more attractive than those who did not. Yet such a bias should presumably affect single participants as well, leading single people to perceive single targets as attractive. Nevertheless, we changed our threat manipulation in Study 2 to rule out these alternative explanations. In Study 2, we described all target individuals as single. To manipulate threat, we varied whether the target indicated an interest in dating (high threat) or indicated he or she was not currently looking to date (low threat). Finally, we made one other minor change in Study 2. We presented face morphs of 7% rather than 10% increments to participants. Finer gradations test the perceptual sensitivity of the downgrading effects.

In Study 2, we predicted the same pattern of results as Study 1. We expected that participants in relationships would perceive single targets who were interested in dating, and thus could present a threat to their own relationships, as less attractive than other groups. In addition, we expected that perceptual downgrading would occur to the greatest degree when participants were more satisfied with their current relationships partners.

Method

In exchange for research credit or US$10, 114 heterosexual university undergraduates (66% female) participated in the experiment. Data were collected over one academic year. Using the same cover story and design as Study 1, participants learned they would work closely with an ostensible other participant. Again, before learning about the target, participants reported whether they were or were not in a romantic relationship. If they identified as being in a relationship, they then answered several questions, including four questions about how satisfied they were in the relationship on 9-point Likert-type scales (e.g., “In general, to what extent are you satisfied with your current relationship?” adapted from Johnson & Rusbult, 1989).² To compute a single measure of relationship satisfaction, we summed the four questions (α = .80). In general, participants in this sample reported being quite satisfied with their current relationships (range = 14-36, M = 30.7, SD = 4.9).

Participants next received information about a target. Participants saw a photograph and profile information for one of three opposite-sex individuals pretested to be of above average attractiveness. As in Study 1, participants first read generic demographic information about the target, including his or her major, hometown, and hobbies. All participants read that the target was single. To manipulate threat, we varied whether the target was interested in dating. In the low threat condition (n = 58), when asked whether he or she was interested in dating, the target wrote, “Nah, I’m not interested right now.” In the high threat condition (n = 56), the target wrote, “Sure, I’m interested in dating.” Participants also exchanged and received ostensible feedback from the individual, including their first impressions of the person.

Participants then evaluated the target on several personality dimensions, as in Study 1. Next, participants completed an ostensible knowledge test about the different aspects of the target’s profile. In the knowledge test also was the visual matching task, which served as the primary dependent variable. Participants chose the correct face out of a lineup of faces that varied in attractiveness at 7% increments. Again, they saw the actual face as a referent at the top of the screen and had an accuracy incentive of entry into a raffle for US$50 to choose the correct face. After a few final filler questions about their impressions of the individual, participants were probed for suspicion, debriefed, and thanked for their time.

Results

We coded the photographs of the faces according to the percent of attractive or unattractive face included in the morph. Thus, scores on the visual matching task could range from −35% (least attractive photograph) to +35% (most attractive photograph), with the target’s actual photograph receiving a zero. The specific photograph presented did not produce significant main effects or interaction effects in the test of perceptual downgrading, ps> .14. Thus, analyses were collapsed across this variable.

To test whether people engage in perceptual downgrading when threatened, we conducted a 2 (participant status: single, in a relationship) × 2 (target threat: low, high) ANOVA predicting perceptions of attractiveness. There was a main effect of participant relationship status, F(1, 110) = 7.35, p = .008, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .06, 95% CI = [.004, .16]. In general, single participants (M = 2.8%, SD = 8.2%) perceived the target individual as more attractive than did participants in relationships (M = −1.3%, SD = 7.8%). There was no main effect of target threat, F(1, 110) = 1.8, p = .18, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .02, 95% CI = [.00, .09]. As expected, there was a significant interaction, F(1, 110) = 4.71, p = .03, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .04, 95% CI = [.00, .13]. As seen in Figure 5, participants in relationships who learned the target was interested in dating, and thus could be a potential threat to their relationship, viewed the target as less attractive than participants in relationships who learned the target was not interested in dating, t(110) = 2.34, p = .02, d = .66, 95% CI = [.09, 1.22], single participants who learned the target was not interested in dating, t(110) = 2.94, p = .004, d = .77, 95% CI = [.24, 1.28], and single participants who learned the target was interested in dating, t(110) = 3.44, p < .001, d = .92, 95% CI = [.38, 1.46]. Moreover, whereas partnered participants’ perceptions of attractiveness differed depending on whether the target was interested in dating, single participants’ perceptions did not, t(110) = 0.63, p = .53, d = 0.16 95% CI = [−.33, .65].³

To explore whether participants downgraded to a greater degree when they were satisfied in their own relationships, we tested whether relationship satisfaction and target threat predicted perceived attractiveness. Among participants in relationships, we ran a regression analysis predicting perceptions of attractiveness from the effect coded target threat condition (−1 = low threat, 1 = high threat), the centered aggregate relationship satisfaction variable, and their interaction. There was no main effect of participants’ relationship satisfaction, b = 0.13, 95% CI = [−.33, .60], t(44) = 0.58, p = .56. There was a significant effect of threat condition, b = −2.66, 95% CI = [−4.86, −.46], t(44) = −2.44, p = .02. Targets not interested in dating appeared more attractive than those who were interested in dating. Finally, there was a marginally significant interaction of target threat and relationship satisfaction on perceived attractiveness, b = −.39, 95% CI = [−.85, .08], t(44) = −1.68, p = .09. As seen in Figure 6, when participants were not satisfied in their relationships (−1 SD from the mean satisfaction), they perceived the target as equally attractive regardless of whether he or she was a potential threat, b = −.81, 95% CI = [−3.95, 2.34], t(44) = −0.52, p = .61. When participants were highly satisfied in their current relationships (+1 SD from the mean satisfaction), however, the target who could be a potential threat was seen as less attractive than the nonthreatening target, b = −4.57, 95% CI = [−7.74, −1.42], t(44) = −2.92, p = .005.

Figure 6.

Perceived attractiveness as predicted by participants’ satisfaction in their current relationship and target threat.

Thus, consistent with Study 1, participants in relationships perceptually downgraded attractive others when they represented a threat to current relationships, even when given financial accuracy incentives to select the correct match. In addition, perceptual downgrading occurred to a marginally greater extent when participants were highly satisfied with their current partners, suggesting the strategy occurs when people are motivated to protect their current relationships from potential threats.

Integrating Findings Across Both Studies

The present studies were each run over the course of 1 academic year. Thus, the stopping rules for our sample sizes were based on a pre-determined time period for data collection. Post hoc observed power analyses revealed we were 74% powered to find our predicted interaction effect in Study 1 and 58% powered to find the effect in Study 2. In the context of evaluating the overall case for the reliability of our findings, we combined our two study samples to (a) test the strength of the interaction effect across both studies and (b) increase our sample size (n = 245) and subsequent power (92%). Because the dependent variables in each of our samples were slightly different (e.g., ranging from −50% to +50% in Study 1 and −35% to +35% in Study 2), we first standardized the perceived attractiveness scores in each sample. We then combined them into one single variable of standardized perceived attractiveness scores.

We conducted a 2 (participant relationship status: single, in a relationship) × 2 (target threat: low, high) × 2 (study: Studies 1 and 2) ANOVA. There were no significant main, F(1, 237) = 0.08, p = .78, or interaction effects of the study variable, Study × Threat: F(1, 237) = 0.13, p = .72; Study × Relationship Status: F(1, 237) = 0.59, p =.44; and Study × Threat × Relationship: F(1, 237) = 0.09, p = .77, confirming that there were similar patterns of results across our two studies. There was a main effect of participant relationship status, F(1, 237) = 9.48, p = .002, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .04, 95% CI = [.005, .10]. Participants in relationships viewed the target as less attractive (M = −.24, SD = 1.04) than did single participants (M = .15, SD = 0.95). In addition, there was a main effect of threat condition, F(1, 237) = 5.11, p = .03, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .02, 95% CI = [.00, .07]. Participants viewed the target who was romantically available as less attractive (M = −.10 SD = 1.13) than the one who was romantically unavailable (M = .10, SD = 0.84). Most importantly, there was a significant interaction, F(1, 237) = 11.40, p = .001, $η_{p}^{2}$ = .05, 95% CI = [.005, .10]. Participants in relationships who learned the target was romantically available, and thus could be a potential threat to their relationship, viewed the target as less attractive than participants in relationships who learned the target was romantically unavailable, t(237) = 3.61, p < .001, d = .74, 95% CI = [.33, 1.15], single participants who learned the target was unavailable, t(237) = 3.75, p < .001, d = .70, 95% CI = [.33, 1.07], and single participants who learned the target was available, t(237) = 4.49, p < .001, d = .84, 95% CI = [.46, 1.21]. Moreover, whereas partnered participants’ perceptions of attractiveness differed depending on whether the target was romantically available, single participants’ perceptions did not, t(237) = 0.90, p = .37, d = 0.15 95% CI = [−.17, .47]. The analyses combining the two study samples revealed a consistent and reliable perceptual downgrading effect.

Moreover, we took advantage of the increased power of our combined sample to test an additional conceptual question. We tested whether the average perceptual representations of the groups were not only significantly different from each other but whether they were also different from zero. In our studies, zero on the scale represents the target’s true, objective face. Thus, testing the group means against zero allows for a unique test of whether individuals perceived the face as significantly less or more attractive than the individual actually is. Testing each of the group means against zero revealed that the only group that statistically differed from zero was the people in relationships who encountered a romantically available target, t(46) = −4.11, p < .001. In other words, people in romantic relationships perceived the individual to be less attractive than his or her actual face. Also of note, the mean attractiveness scores of single individuals who saw the romantically available target were marginally different from zero, t(74) = 1.68, p = .09. In this case, however, the bias was in the positive direction. This suggests that single individuals who encounter a romantically available target might have a slight inclination to see the individual as more attractive than he or she actually is, which may reflect a motivation to seek an attractive partner. The mean attractiveness scores of participants in relationships who encountered a romantically unavailable individual were not different from zero, t(47) = 0.89, p = .38, nor were the means of single participants who encountered a romantically unavailable individual, t(74) = 0.90, p = .37.

Discussion

Two studies found support for a perceptual downgrading effect. When participants in relationships encountered an attractive individual who might represent a threat to the relationship, they perceived the individual as less attractive than both single participants and participants in relationships who did not encounter threats (Studies 1 and 2). These effects were strongest among individuals who were more satisfied with their current relationships (Study 2).

This research contributes to the literature in several important ways. A large portion of research on devaluation of the attractiveness of alternatives has focused on judgments of attractiveness gleaned from Likert-type scales when participants were explicitly aware of the judgments they were making (e.g., Johnson & Rusbult, 1989; Karremans & Verwijmeren, 2008; Lydon et al., 2003; Lydon et al., 1999; Meyer et al., 2011). In many such studies, it is unclear if individuals in relationships perceive individuals to be equally as attractive as do single folks but then correct for this and simply report lower ratings. If so, effects may be the result of social desirability concerns or of an explicit and deliberate evaluative process. In the present work, because participants were not asked to explicitly rate the attractiveness of the targets, and indeed reported no awareness that the faces in the arrays differed in attractiveness (neither in the pilot studies nor in our experimental studies), social desirability biases or demand effects are an unlikely explanation for the effects. The results of the present studies suggest there may be differences not only in how people explicitly evaluate others but also in how they perceive attractive others.

The present work joins a much smaller number of second-generation studies that test whether devaluation types of effects occur on more implicit levels, outside of individuals’ conscious awareness (e.g., Karremans et al., 2011; Maner et al., 2009). Moreover, by using a unique visual matching task, we were able to go beyond the current literature. Because the matching task contained the target individual’s actual photograph, we were able to test whether individuals’ perceptions of the target differed from the target’s true, objective face. Results revealed not only relative differences between groups of participants but also that individuals in relationships viewed available alternatives as less attractive than they objectively were. Ours is the first study that we know of that is able to provide evidence of a devaluation effect relative to an objective marker.

It is important to note that the downgrading biases in our studies, while reliable, were relatively small. As can be seen in Figure 7, participants did not often misperceive the individuals to be at the extreme attractive or unattractive ends of the scale. Rather, they tended to perceive the individuals as slightly more or less attractive than the actual face. This is likely due to several factors. First, motivational biases are constrained by reality. Much as they might want to, people are unlikely to misperceive beauties as beasts. As Kunda (1990) famously noted, “people will come to believe what they want to believe only to the extent that reason permits” (p. 4). Indeed, our effects likely reflect the fact that motivational biases work within a relatively small, but important, window of malleable perceptual experiences. Moreover, in our studies there were several methodological aspects that worked against bias. Specifically, we gave participants an incentive to choose the correct face, and we showed the individual’s true face right on the screen. Other studies that, for example, measure memory for previously seen faces or allow for free-ranging subjective judgments of attractiveness do not place methodological constraints on people’s motivated biases, and as a result may capture larger differences between groups. Finally, that our effects are relatively small can also be interpreted as additional evidence that our visual matching task represented an implicit measure of bias. Indeed, if response bias or demand were responsible for our effects, then we might have expected individuals to choose even more extreme faces on the task. In essence, the deck was stacked against perceptual downgrading and still we found effects. This allows us to say with more certainty that implicit differences in motivated perceptual representations of attractiveness exist. Thus, we see the small differences in our effects not as a weakness, but as a strength of these studies.

Figure 7.

Proportion of participants choosing each face in Studies 1 and 2.

Possible Mechanisms Involved in Perceptual Downgrading

Questions remain as to what mechanisms are responsible for the downgrading effect. How do people come to form biased representations of attractive others? Although speculative and outside the purview of the current data, it is possible that perceptual downgrading effects occur through attentional biases. Indeed, attention is implicated in romantic relationship maintenance. Some research suggests people in committed relationships spontaneously direct attention away from attractive opposite-sex individuals (Maner et al., 2009). Although it is unlikely that the perceptual downgrading effects found in the current studies were merely a byproduct of general inattention—indeed then there should have been more errors on the visual matching task in general, not systematic errors in the hypothesized direction—it is possible that attentional biases may occur on a smaller scale when perceivers are made to attend to attractive faces. Directed attentional processes may have influenced the way people took in and encoded the specific features of faces. Indeed, there is evidence that social context changes the way people scan and attend to features of faces, which can have marked effects on aspects of face processing (Aviezar et al., 2008).

In the present work, directed attention may have led people to differentially focus on facial features indicative of attractiveness. Specific facial features are biologically and evolutionarily associated with attractiveness (Johnston & Franklin, 1993; Perrett, 2010; Swami & Furnham, 2008). In women, indicators of youth and femininity including large eyes, small noses, fuller lips, and smaller lower jaws are considered more attractive. In men, markers of masculinity and testosterone—including broader jaws, pronounced brows, and jutting cheekbones—are markers of attractiveness. In addition, basic facial symmetry and healthy complexion are associated with increased attractiveness between both sexes. Some researchers have identified a “golden ratio” of attractiveness (Schmid, Marx, & Samal, 2008). Using 29 different measurements, they have determined the optimal facial structure for maximum attractiveness, including, for example, an ideal ratio of 1.6 of the length of the face to the width of the face. Because certain specific features of faces are markers of attractiveness, it is possible that to downgrade attractive others, people direct attention away from features of faces that are associated with attractiveness and toward those that are associated with unattractiveness (e.g., particular facial flaws). Future research could explore whether different attentional patterns contribute to perceptual downgrading. By tracking participants’ eyes while they observe attractive faces, for example, it may be possible to see what specific aspects of the face participants attend to when making their decisions.

A Role for Cognition

Even if downgrading arises from low-level differences in the encoding of facial features, this does not necessarily suggest that cognition is entirely absent in the downgrading process. The effectiveness of perceptual downgrading requires people translate their perceptual experiences into some extant judgment of (un)attractiveness. Indeed, moving from the perception of large noses and thin lips to the conclusion that a person is unattractive or unworthy of pursuit likely involves a subsequent judgment or appraisal as such. Although attractiveness has objective physical components, it also involves subjective interpretations—many times those with suboptimal distance between the eyes or larger than ideal chins can still be considered attractive. Indeed, though the majority of people we encounter on a daily basis only score between a 4 and a 6 out of 10 on the “golden ratio” measure (while heartthrob actor Brad Pitt scores a 9.3; Schmid et al., 2008), many average Joes are still considered attractive. Thus, it is likely that the process of forming biased perceptual experiences precedes and influences cognitive appraisals of attractiveness, which enable people to resist a tempting alternative partner. Perception and cognition likely join forces to maximally affect resistance to temptations.

Temptation Resistance

An important next step for future research is to explore the effects of perceptual downgrading on temptation resistance and relationship maintenance behaviors. Does seeing a threatening alternative as less attractive help people resist the urge to pursue the individual? Given that people base decisions about whether to pursue potential partners in large part on physical attractiveness (Li et al., 2002), downgrading an individual’s attractiveness might be an effective route to relationship maintenance. While many studies have explored predictors of devaluation, far fewer have explored the direct effects of devaluation on actual behaviors suggestive of successful temptation resistance. Future studies should explore the consequences of perceptual downgrading for decreasing the motivational strength of the temptation and increasing actions related to relationship maintenance.

Perceptual Downgrading and Upgrading in Other Self-Control Domains

The phenomenon of perceptual downgrading may extend beyond the domain of romantic relationships and face perception. Indeed there is no a priori reason to suppose that perceptual downgrading only occurs in the relationship context; rather, it might be a more general process that occurs as people encode the features of any tempting object. Which specific perceptual features amount to an appraisal of desirability can vary across domains. The icy condensation on a cold bottle of beer, the plushness of the cushions on the beckoning couch after a long day of work, or the blueness of the sky from the inside of an office cubicle are all perceptual features that might be distorted when long-term goals compete with short-term temptations. Future research could explore perceptual downgrading in different domains to test the generalizability of the effect to different aspects of self-control.

In addition, although the current studies explored perceptual downgrading of temptations, complementary process may also be at work during self-control conflicts. Goal-relevant objects may be perceptually “upgraded” so that they ultimately appear more attractive. Indeed, counteractive control theory (Fishbach & Trope, 2007; Trope & Fishbach, 2000) suggests people proactively enact effective self-control by either decreasing the motivational strength of the temptation or by boosting the motivational strength of the goal (Fishbach & Converse, 2010). People explicitly try to bolster the value of a goal by elaborating why the goal is important or gratifying (Kuhl & Beckmann, 1985; Myrseth et al., 2009; Trope & Fishbach, 2000). Perceptual upgrading of goal-promoting objects may assist in elevating the weight, importance, desirability, or feasibility of pursuing the goal at hand. Indeed, within the romantic relationship domain, there is some evidence to suggest people judge their own romantic partners’ faces as more symmetrical, a key component of attractiveness (Penton-Voak, Rowe, & Williams, 2007). Future research might explore ways in which motivated perceptual representations of goal-relevant objects lead to resolutions of self-control conflicts.

Conclusion

This research provides evidence that perceptual processes may be involved in regulating self-control conflicts. When people in committed romantic relationships encounter desirable, available individuals, they may perceptually downgrade the attractiveness of the individual. Biased perceptual representations may help to temper the allure of temptations that serve as obstacles to longer term goals. Indeed, as the present studies suggest, motivated perception may help to cool otherwise “hot” temptations.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the help of Thomas Geib and Frances Mallari who conducted parts of these studies for their senior honors theses. We also thank Jenna Koroly for her help with additional data collection.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material

The online supplemental material is available at .

Notes

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