“The Way I Am Is the Way You Ought to Be”

Abstract

People often become evangelists for their own lifestyles. When it comes to relational status, people are rarely content to simply say “being single works for me” or “being in a relationship suits my disposition.” Results from four studies suggested that this tendency to view one’s own relational status as the universal ideal emerges in part from a desire to rationalize one’s own relational status. Building on existing evidence that people are motivated to rationalize circumstances they perceive as likely to persist, we predicted that participants’ perceptions of the stability of their own relational status would lead them to rationalize that status. In Studies 1 and 2, we found evidence for an association between perceptions of stability and idealizations and ruled out an alternative explanation. In Studies 3 and 4, we found evidence of the effect of stability on people’s judgments of same- and different-status others in contexts in which relational status should carry little objective weight.

Keywords

prejudice motivation interpersonal relationships

People often become evangelists for their own lifestyles. When it comes to relational status, people are rarely content to simply say “being single works for me” or “being in a relationship suits my disposition”; rather, they insist that their relational status is the normative ideal that all should strive for. Newlyweds may encourage single friends to tie the knot and experience marital bliss; single people may pity married friends’ tragic loss of freedom. This normative idealization of one’s own relational status may then lead people to treat others differently depending on their relational status: Single people may spend less time with recently coupled friends because they “just aren’t as fun” now that they are coupled. Likewise, people in relationships may prefer the company of attached others and stop inviting single friends to events, imagining that they would feel like fifth wheels. Empirically speaking, in Western society, in which most people either are or expect to be in stable long-term relationships (Helweg-Larsen, Harding, & Klein, 2011), discrimination against single people is frequent (DePaulo & Morris, 2005).

We hypothesized that this normative idealization of one’s own lifestyle—that is, the tendency to see one’s own relational status as ideal for all and to judge others more favorably when they share that status—arises in part from people’s motivation to rationalize their own relational status. No relational status is perfect, and both couplehood and singlehood entail sacrifices (e.g., of one’s individual autonomy or of the material benefits of couplehood, respectively). The knowledge that others live their lives differently than oneself can threaten the rationality of one’s own life choices, and the idealization of one’s own status provides a simple rationalization in the face of these ever-present potential threats. This idealization implies that others are worse off because of their different life arrangements and that “the way I am is the way everyone ought to be.”

If the normative idealization of one’s own relational status serves a rationalizing function, then it should emerge most strongly under conditions that call for rationalization. Capitalizing on existing evidence that people are especially motivated to rationalize conditions they perceive as likely to persist (Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002; Laurin, Kay, & Fitzsimons, 2012; Laurin, Shepherd, & Kay, 2010), we hypothesized that normative idealizations of one’s own relational status can be influenced by perceptions of relationship-status changeability. In other words, we hypothesized that it is when people feel that their relational status is likely to persist that they should be motivated to rationalize it through normative idealization.

Motivated Rationalization of Unchangeable Circumstances

According to the folk wisdom captured by the Serenity Prayer, mental peace entails accepting the things we cannot change. Psychological research has taken this idea one step further and shown that people are motivated to not only passively accept but also actively rationalize unchangeable conditions. People find ways to favorably evaluate unchangeable circumstances, including actions they cannot undo (Festinger, 1957), decisions they cannot reverse (D. T. Gilbert & Ebert, 2002), outcomes that are virtual certainties (Kay et al., 2002; Laurin et al., 2012), and systems from which they cannot escape (Laurin et al., 2010).

These findings fit well with the idea that perceiving an unchangeable situation as undesirable can lead to feelings of being trapped—a profoundly dysphoric experience (P. Gilbert & Allan, 1998; P. Gilbert & Gilbert, 2003; Kidd, 2004). People may be strongly motivated to avoid this dysphoria by construing their unchangeable circumstances in the most favorable light possible. One way to do this is to represent one’s current situation as an ideal not just for oneself, but universally. People may feel confident that their circumstances are favorable if they can convince themselves that anyone would be best off in such circumstances. In the research reported here, we extended this idea to a new and important context, predicting that people who perceived their relational status as relatively unchangeable would tend to construe that status as a normative ideal and to prefer others who shared it. In so doing, we documented novel forms of relationship-based prejudices and provided insights into how those prejudices are rooted in rationalization motives.

Normative Idealization of Relationship Status

People vary in their perception of how changeable their relational status is—of the likelihood that it will persist into the future. Here, we refer to this perception as stability. Stability is often linked to affective variables, such as satisfaction (e.g., Busby, Carroll, & Willoughby, 2011; see also Rusbult, 1983); however, stability as we define it is also an independent construct. For instance, coupled individuals can be satisfied with a relationship they perceive as unlikely to persist or dissatisfied with a relationship they perceive as likely to last until death do them part. The same reasoning applies to single people. Stability as we define it is also distinct from commitment: Although commitment implies a willingness to ensure that the relationship continues, we conceptualized stability simply as the belief that one’s relational status will continue, controlling for any associated affect.

In the present research, we tested whether, in the domain of people’s relational status, perceptions of stability lead to rationalization in the form of normative idealization. Specifically, we hypothesized that if people believe that their own relational status is highly stable, they should rationalize it by viewing it as ideal for others (Study 1) and by evaluating more favorably others who share their status compared with those who do not (Studies 2–4).

Although we propose that normative idealizations should serve to justify stable relational statuses among both coupled and single individuals, previous work has supported another possibility: Coupled individuals might show a greater tendency to engage in this form of rationalization. At least in Western societies, many readily available cultural concepts idealize couplehood (DePaulo & Morris, 2005), perhaps in part because idealization of couplehood serves a system-justification function (Day, Kay, Holmes, & Napier, 2011). For this reason, people may find it relatively easy to generate culturally credible normative idealizations of couplehood but relatively difficult to do the same for singlehood. Thus, although the motivation to rationalize a stable relational status may exist equivalently among coupled and single individuals, coupled individuals may be especially likely to satisfy it through normative idealization. We considered this alternative prediction throughout the studies.

Study 1

We predicted that participants who viewed their relational status as more stable would idealize that status more. We also predicted that this effect would be independent of satisfaction and, therefore, that it could not be explained by a projection effect whereby people who are happy with their own status assume that others would be as well.

Method

Participants

Eighty undergraduates (58 women, 20 men, 2 unidentified; mean age = 18.8 years; 50% Caucasian, 36% East Asian, and 14% other ethnicities; 40 coupled, 40 single) participated in return for course credit.

Procedure

We recruited only participants who in an earlier mass testing session had identified themselves as either unambiguously coupled (exclusively dating, cohabiting, engaged, or married) or single.

Participants answered questions about demographic information, including a question verifying their relational status (“Are you currently in a romantic relationship?”). All but 1 of the coupled participants also indicated their relationship satisfaction, using a 7-point scale from 1 (extremely dissatisfied) to 7 (extremely satisfied). Participants then completed a 5-item stability measure (α_coupled = .71, α_single = .78) and a 4-item idealization measure (α_coupled = .72, α_single = .50; see Table 1). In both cases, participants rated items tailored to their relational status, using a 7-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

Table 1.

Measures Used in Study 1

Measure	Items for coupled participants	Items for single participants
Perceived stability	I think my current relationship is likely to last for a long time.	I think my current status as a single person is likely to last for a long time.
	Many obstacles exist which would make it difficult to leave my current relationship.	Many obstacles exist which would make it difficult for me to become involved in a relationship.
	My current relationship is extremely stable.	My current status as a single person is extremely stable.
	When I picture myself in the future, I am always still in my current relationship.	When I picture myself in the future, I am usually still single.
	Leaving my current relationship would have very disruptive consequences for me.	Becoming involved in a relationship would have very disruptive consequences for me.
Idealization of personal status	Just about everyone wants to find a long-term romantic partner.	Although many people feel pressured to find a long-term romantic relationship partner, many people would prefer to be independent.
	It’s possible for just about everyone to be happy and fulfilled in a long-term romantic relationship.	It’s possible for just about everyone to be happy and fulfilled as a single person.
	Individuals who are in long-term romantic relationships are generally more valuable members of society than those who are not.	Individuals who are single are generally more valuable members of society than those who are not.
	Individuals who are in long-term romantic relationships generally have more meaningful, fulfilling lives than those who are not.	Individuals who are single generally have more meaningful, fulfilling lives than those who are not.

Results

Table 2 presents mean stability and idealization scores for single and coupled participants. Compared with single participants, coupled participants saw their status as more stable, t(78) = 2.34, p = .02, and idealized it more, t(78) = 5.23, p < .001. Regressing participants’ status idealizations on stability (centered), relational status (−1 = single; 1 = coupled), and their interaction yielded only the predicted effect of stability, β = 0.43, sr = .37, t(76) = 3.62, p = .001 (see Table 3). Both single participants, β = 0.30, sr = .18, t(76) = 1.80, p = .08, and coupled participants, β = 0.56, sr = .34, t(76) = 3.31, p = .001, idealized their relational status to the extent that they perceived it to be stable.¹

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics for Study 1

Participant status	Stability	Idealization of personal status
Coupled	5.20 (1.07)	3.89 (1.30)
Single	3.94 (1.09)	3.31 (0.89)

Note: Standard deviations are shown in parentheses.

Table 3.

Regression Coefficients Predicting Idealizations of Personal Status (Study 1)

Predictor	b	95% CI	t(76)	p
Intercept	3.52 (0.13)	[3.26, 3.79]	26.24	< .001
Perceived stability	0.39 (0.11)	[0.18, 0.61]	3.62	.001
Relationship status	0.05 (0.13)	[−0.22, 0.31]	0.34	.74
Stability × Status interaction	0.12 (0.11)	[−0.97, 0.34]	1.10	.28

Note: Standard errors are shown in parentheses. CI = confidence interval.

To more rigorously test our prediction, we conducted the same analysis among coupled participants, controlling for relationship satisfaction, which correlated relatively highly with stability, r = .49, p = .001 (see Busby et al., 2011). The stability effect remained significant, β = 0.45, sr = .41, t(36) = 2.65, p = .01, and satisfaction had no effect, β = −0.04, t(36) = 0.24, p = .81.²

Discussion

Both coupled and single participants idealized their relational status as a function of their stability perceptions. Although in this study the effect was marginal for single participants, it reached significance in an additional study (see note 1), which had a larger sample and greater power. Furthermore, a meta-analysis across both the additional study and Study 1, using the method of inverse-variance weighted z′s, yielded similar effect sizes for single participants, z′ = 0.26, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [0.08, 0.45], r = .26, and coupled participants, z′ = 0.27, 95% CI = [0.09, 0.46], r = .27. Thus, stability accounted for a similar proportion of variance in normative idealizations among both single and coupled individuals.

These results indicate that perceptions of stability are an important predictor of normative idealizations. Moreover, at least for coupled participants, the effect was independent of relationship satisfaction, which suggests that the effect was not simply a reflection of positive feelings that overlap with stability. This evidence, although correlational, supports our hypothesis that perceived stability leads people to rationalize their status by viewing it as ideal for everyone.

Study 2

If people who feel that their relational status is stable idealize that status, then they may also prefer others who share their status. We tested this prediction in Study 2, extending our hypotheses to the realm of interpersonal judgments. For this study, we capitalized on a social phenomenon that creates a special divide between single and coupled individuals: Valentine’s Day. We recruited participants on Valentine’s Day, measured their relational status and stability perceptions, and elicited their judgments of a target who was either single or coupled and whose Valentine’s Day evening they had just imagined. We predicted that stability would be associated with more positive judgments of a target who shared their status than of a target who did not.

Method

Participants

One hundred thirteen undergraduates (51 women, 62 men; mean age = 20.6 years; 47% Caucasian, 22% East Asian, 23% South Asian, 8% other ethnicities; 49 coupled, 64 single) participated in return for a snack.

Procedure

We recruited participants from a large campus common area. All participants completed the Study 1 stability measure, worded to match their relational status. Participants read a generic description of the target—“Nick” or “Nicole,” a gender-matched hypothetical student at their university—that described him or her as either single or coupled. Participants then wrote a short description of how they expected the target would spend Valentine’s Day evening. Finally, participants used 7-point scales from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely) to rate the degree to which the target was happy, was fulfilled, and would have had a better evening if he or she had the opposite relational status (α = .76).

Results

We first regressed participants’ judgments of the target on target status (1 = same as participant; −1 = different from participant), stability (centered), and their interaction. Only the predicted interaction emerged, β = 0.31, sr = .31, t(109) = 3.44, p = .001 (see Table 4 and Fig. 1). Participants who saw their status as more stable made more positive judgments of same-status targets, β = 0.36, sr = .25, t(109) = 2.71, p = .01, but less positive judgments of different-status targets, β = −0.27, sr = −.20, t(109) = 2.14, p = .03, compared with participants who saw their status as less stable. Put differently, participants who perceived their status as stable (1 SD above the mean for stability) judged same-status targets more positively than different-status targets, β = 0.26, sr = .18, t(109) = 2.03, p < .05, but participants who perceived their status as relatively unstable (1 SD below the mean for stability) judged different-status targets more positively than same-status targets, β = −0.36, sr = −.26, t(109) = 2.81, p = .01.

Table 4.

Regression Coefficients Predicting Judgments of Same-Status Versus Different-Status Targets (Study 2)

Predictor	b	95% CI	t(109)	p
Intercept	4.78 (0.12)	[4.53, 5.02]	39.03	< .001
Perceived stability	0.05 (0.10)	[−0.15, 0.24]	0.50	.62
Target status	−0.07 (0.12)	[−0.31, 0.18]	0.54	.60
Stability × Status interaction	0.33 (0.10)	[0.14, 0.52]	3.44	.001

Note: Standard errors are shown in parentheses. CI = confidence interval.

Fig. 1.

Results from Study 2: mean judgment of a target on Valentine’s Day as a function of relational-status stability and target status. Higher values indicate more positive judgments.

A test of the three-way interaction of participant status, target status, and stability did not approach significance, β = 0.03, t(105) = 0.25, p = .81, which further suggests that coupled and single participants might not differ in the association between their status-stability perceptions and normative idealizations. However, our small sample may have lacked the power to produce a significant three-way interaction. We therefore provide more conclusive evidence on the issue after the section describing Study 4, where we present a meta-analysis across Studies 2 through 4 comparing the effect size among coupled versus single participants.

Discussion

The results of Study 2 show that people who perceive their relational status as stable not only view their own status as ideal for others (Study 1) but also view individuals who share their status more positively than those who do not. Interestingly, participants who viewed their own status as unstable showed more positive views of people with the opposite status—presumably the status they expected to soon attain; however, we did not replicate this intriguing finding in Studies 3 and 4. As in Study 1, results from a second regression controlling for relationship satisfaction among coupled participants did not affect the focal Stability × Target Status interaction, β = 0.37, sr = .31, t(43) = 2.48, p = .02. The Satisfaction × Target Status interaction was not significant, β = −0.18, t(43) = 1.17, p = .25, which again suggests that the effects of relational stability were independent of relationship satisfaction.

Study 3

Our results from Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that people who perceive greater stability in their relational status rationalize that status more, viewing it as a normative ideal and evaluating others who share their status more favorably than those who do not. However, the reverse causal relationship could account for these results: Perhaps individuals who view their current relationship status as more ideal perceive that status to be more stable. Under this interpretation, however, we would have expected to find that coupled individuals who viewed couplehood as more ideal were more satisfied with their relationship, which we did not. To more definitively support our interpretation, we manipulated perceived relationship-status stability and tested its effects on interpersonal judgments in Studies 3 and 4.

In Study 3, participants played the role of a prospective employer evaluating job applicants. Following a stability manipulation, participants read about an applicant who was either single or coupled and provided judgments of the applicant. We predicted that participants in the high-stability condition would more favorably evaluate and be more likely to hire applicants who shared their relational status compared with applicants who did not.

Method

Participants

One hundred fifty-four American adults³ (68 women, 86 men; mean age = 31.0 years; 80% Caucasian, 7% East Asian, 13% other ethnicities; 84 coupled, of whom 74% were married or cohabiting; 70 single) were recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and participated in return for $0.50.

Procedure

Participants first completed a questionnaire, which included the relational-status question used in Study 1. To ensure that participants had an unambiguous relational status, we did not include those who indicated that they were casually dating (n = 10) or divorced or widowed (n = 6) in the sample described above or in the analyses described below.

Next, we used a biased time line procedure to manipulate the stability of that status. We told participants,

While it is impossible to predict how long your [current relationship / status as a single person] will last, there is probably a certain point up to which you are fairly certain it will last. Please select the point on the line below at the time point up until which you feel 99.9% certain that your [relationship / status as a single person] will last. In other words, select the point at the farthest point where you would feel comfortable saying “[I am sure my relationship will last until then / I am sure I will be single until then].”

We manipulated stability by varying the time line participants responded with. The time line always had 30 segments, with the low anchor labeled “right now.” In the high-stability condition, the high anchor was labeled “the end of this year,” which, as expected, led participants to select responses higher on the scale. In the low-stability condition, the high anchor was labeled “the end of your life,” which, as expected, led participants to select midscale responses (see Table 5).

Table 5.

Means and Standard Deviations for Responses on the Time-Line Measure of Stability Measure (Study 3)

Participant status	Low-stability condition	High-stability condition	t	p
Coupled	22.58 (9.39)	28.20 (5.89)	t(82) = 3.38	.001
Single	10.55 (7.34)	26.22 (5.48)	t(68) = 9.96	< .001

Note: Standard deviations are shown in parentheses.

Next, we asked participants to imagine that they were reviewing entry-level applicants for a marketing position. They read a positive description of a same-gendered applicant (“Jordan”) in which we manipulated Jordan’s relationship status. Participants then completed dependent measures assessing hiring intentions and interpersonal evaluations. They used 7-point scales from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely) to rate how likely they were to consider hiring Jordan, want Jordan to work at their firm, and be happy if Jordan started working at their firm (α = .91), as well as to rate how happy Jordan was, how fulfilled he was, how much life satisfaction he had, and how happy they were for him (α = .84).

Results

We submitted participants’ interpersonal evaluations to a 2 (condition: high stability vs. low stability) × 2 (target status: same vs. different) between-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA), which yielded a marginal effect of condition, F(1, 150) = 3.20, p = .08, d = 0.28, with more favorable evaluations in the high-stability condition than in the low-stability condition. The predicted interaction qualified this effect, F(1, 150) = 4.20, p = .04, η_p ² = .03 (see Fig. 2). Consistent with our hypotheses, results showed that the high-stability condition produced more favorable ratings than did the low-stability condition when participants judged a same-status target, F(1, 150) = 7.36, p = .01, d = 0.62, but not when they judged a different-status target, F(1, 150) = 0.03, p = .86. Furthermore, participants evaluated same-status targets more favorably than different-status targets in the high-stability condition, F(1, 150) = 4.72, p = .03, d = 0.50, but not in the low-stability condition, F(1, 150) = 0.51, p = .48.

Fig. 2.

Results from Study 3: mean interpersonal evaluation of a target as a function of stability and target status. Higher values indicate more positive evaluations. Error bars represent pooled standard errors.

A 2 (condition) × 2 (target status) × 2 (participant status) ANOVA failed to produce a three-way interaction, F(1, 146) = 0.09, p = .77. Although our sample size may have been too small to detect this interaction accurately, this result suggested that coupled and single participants did not differ in their responses to the stability manipulation (see the Meta-Analysis Across Studies section).

Finally, we conducted the same 2 (condition) × 2 target status) ANOVA on participants’ hiring intentions. Counter to predictions, no significant effects emerged, Fs < 2.68, ps > .10.

Discussion

In Study 3, participants who were induced to perceive their relational status as stable evaluated others who shared it more favorably. However, this result held only for participants’ interpersonal evaluations of a target; their behavioral intentions did not reveal the predicted effects. We speculate that participants might have recognized their own bias and suppressed it when reporting their behavioral intentions. We described the candidate as well suited to the job, but people often need an excuse to legitimize acting on a prejudice. For example, aversive racists rarely discriminate against clearly strong or clearly weak African American job candidates; rather, prejudice emerges only when a candidate’s qualifications are ambiguous (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2000). In other words, people need some attributional cover to act on their prejudices: They need to be able to attribute their actions to a favored individual’s positive attributes and a disfavored individual’s negative attributes. In Study 4, we investigated relational-status-based prejudice in a context that provided greater attributional cover for discrimination.

Study 4

As in Study 3, we manipulated stability and measured behavioral intentions toward same- and different-status targets. However, in Study 4, we provided participants attributional cover to act on their prejudices. Specifically, we described a political candidate who had appealing qualifications but supported an extreme and unfavorable policy. We predicted that, having received this mixed information about the candidate, participants in the high-stability condition but not participants in the low-stability condition would respond more positively to a candidate who shared their own relational status than to one who did not.

Method

Participants

One hundred twenty-three coupled American adults⁴ (66 women, 56 men, 1 unidentified; mean age = 33.6 years; 84% Caucasian, 10% East Asian, 6% other ethnicities; 73% married or cohabiting) were recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and participated in exchange for $0.50. We discarded responses from participants who subsequently reported that they were casually dating (n = 1) or single (n = 5); these participants were not included in the sample described above or in the analyses described below.

Procedure

Participants completed the stability manipulation used in Study 3, after which they read a fairly positive description of a same-gendered mayoral candidate (“Nick” or “Nicole”). Embedded in this description was a manipulation of the candidate’s relational status.

Participants then used a 7-point scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely) to answer three voting-preference questions modeled after the hiring-intention questions used in Study 3 (e.g., “How likely is it that you would consider voting for [Nick/Nicole]?”; α = .92). We then introduced the undesirable policy: The candidate planned to ban high-fat foods in all restaurants. We assumed that most participants would find this policy extreme, which would provide them with attributional license to express any prejudice they might feel. To test for this prejudicial preference, we remeasured participants’ voting preferences (α = .98).

Results

On the basis of the results of Study 3, and because we initially described the candidate as unambiguously well qualified, we did not expect any significant effects of stability on initial voting preferences. However, we did expect that the target’s extreme policy would provide a pretext to express prejudice, such that in the remeasured voting preferences, participants in the high-stability condition would favor the target when he or she shared their status.

We submitted voting preferences to a 2 (condition: high stability vs. low stability) × 2 (target status: same vs. different) × 2 (time of assessment: before receiving undesirable policy information vs. after receiving undesirable policy information) mixed-model ANOVA, which confirmed that participants viewed the policy as undesirable: Their willingness to vote for the candidate was lower after they learned about the policy (M = 2.54, SD = 1.77) than before (M = 3.73, SD = 1.21), F(1, 118) = 59.97, p < .001, d = 1.01. The Target Status × Time of Assessment interaction reached significance, F(1, 118) = 4.14, p = .04, η_p ² = .03, but was qualified by the predicted three-way interaction, F(1, 118) = 4.31, p = .04, η_p ² = .04.

As predicted, before participants read about the policy, neither the interaction nor the main effects reached significance, Fs < 0.58, ps > .44. However, in the remeasure, we found a Target Status × Condition interaction, F(1, 118) = 4.11, p = .04, η_p ² = .03 (see Fig. 3). As predicted, participants showed stronger voting intentions toward same-status targets in the high-stability condition than in the low-stability condition, F(1, 118) = 6.02, p = .02, d = 0.93. No interaction emerged for different-status targets, F(1, 118) = 0.15, p = .70. Furthermore, participants expressed stronger willingness to vote for same-status targets, compared with different-status targets, in the high-stability condition, F(1, 118) = 8.91, p = .003, d = 1.06, but not in the low-stability condition, F < 1.

Fig. 3.

Results from Study 4: mean intention to vote for a mayoral candidate before and after learning about the candidate’s undesirable policy as a function of relational stability and candidate status. Error bars represent pooled standard errors.

Discussion

In Study 4, when we experimentally increased the perceived stability of coupled participants, they displayed favoritism toward same-status targets: They showed stronger voting intentions toward a coupled mayoral candidate compared with a single mayoral candidate. Consistent with Study 3, Study 4 showed that this effect did not emerge when participants had exclusively positive information about the candidate, but emerged only once they had some negative information about the candidate, which provided a pretext to prejudicially favor an individual who shared the participants’ relational status.

Meta-Analysis Across Studies

In a final test comparing the effect for coupled and single participants separately, we conducted meta-analyses across data from Studies 2 through 4 to estimate an aggregated effect size across studies (see Table 6). These analyses, using inverse-variance weighted z′s, confirmed that perceptions of stability led both coupled, z′ = 0.29, 95% CI = [0.12, 0.48], r = .29, and single, z′ = 0.37, 95% CI = [0.11, 0.63], r = .35, participants to treat same-status others more favorably. Of note, the effect for single participants, if anything, surpassed that for coupled participants. Perceptions of stability did not reliably influence evaluations or judgments of different-status others among either coupled participants, z′ = −0.11, 95% CI = [−0.28, 0.08], r = −.10, or single participants, z′ = −0.01, 95% CI = [−0.25, 0.23], r = −.01.⁵ The results of this meta-analysis indicate that both single and coupled individuals engage in normative idealizations of their relational status, when they perceive it as stable, by favoring others who share it.

Table 6.

Effect Sizes for the Relationship Between Stability and Treatment of Same- and Different-Status Others by Coupled and Single Participants (Studies 2–4)

Participant group, target, and study	High-stability mean minus low-stability mean	Pooled SD	p	d	r	z′
Coupled participants
Same-status target
Study 2 (N = 22)	—	—	.02	—	.50	.55
Study 3 (N = 47)	0.34	0.99	.24	0.37	.18	.18
Study 4 (N = 60)	1.11	1.76	.02	0.93	.42	.45
Different-status target
Study 2 (N = 27)	—	—	.33	—	−.19	−.20
Study 3 (N = 37)	−0.19	0.73	.45	0.20	−.10	−.10
Study 4 (N = 63)	−0.17	1.67	.69	−0.14	−.07	−.07
Single participants
Same-status target
Study 2 (N = 32)	—	—	.09	—	.31	.32
Study 3 (N = 30)	0.81	0.93	.03	0.88	.40	.43
Different-status target
Study 2 (N = 33)	—	—	.59	—	−.10	−.10
Study 3 (N = 40)	0.11	0.93	.72	0.12	.06	.06

General Discussion

Lifestyles often entail value trade-offs. For instance, living as a single person versus a as a member of a couple often entails a trade-off between autonomy and companionship. Given these trade-offs, it might be reasonable for people to conclude that no one particular lifestyle is ideal for everyone and that different individuals might be better off in different arrangements (“different strokes for different folks”). Nevertheless, people often act as though certain lifestyles—usually their own—are generally more ideal than the alternatives.

We hypothesized that the belief that one’s own lifestyle, specifically one’s relational status, represents a normative ideal is motivated by a need to rationalize one’s own lifestyle, particularly when that lifestyle is perceived to be relatively unchangeable. We predicted and found that when people, either of their own accord (Studies 1 and 2) or through experimental manipulation (Studies 3 and 4), perceive their relational status to be relatively unchangeable, they idealize that relational status (Study 1) and prefer others who share it over those who do not (Studies 2–4). Normative idealization of one’s relational status may be, in part, a motivated process that functions to rationalize that status when it is perceived as unchangeable.

We also considered an alternative hypothesis: that coupled individuals would be especially likely to use normative idealizations to rationalize their relational status. In no single study did we find that participants’ status moderated our focal effect; moreover, meta-analytic methods provided no indication that stability-driven idealizations were stronger among coupled individuals than single individuals. On the basis of this evidence, we conclude that even though normative idealizations of couplehood may enjoy more obvious cultural support, normative idealizations of singlehood are a viable response for single individuals who believe that their relational status is relatively stable.

Nevertheless, the findings we report here may help explain Western society’s widespread singlism (DePaulo & Morris, 2005)—that is, inferior treatment of single individuals. More than half of American adults are currently married, and 90% of American adults will be married at least once in their lifetime (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Although as many as 50% of these marriages end in divorce (Bramlett & Mosher, 2011; Norton & Moorman, 1987), most people believe that their own risk of getting divorced is relatively low (Baker & Emery, 1993) and that they have excellent chances of ending up in a stable, long-term romantic relationship (Helweg-Larsen et al., 2011). The fact that most adults believe they are, or expect to be, in stable relationships, and therefore may be motivated to idealize couplehood, may explain the widespread tendency to treat coupled individuals more favorably than single individuals.

Although we have focused on the context of relational status, we believe that the principles underlying our specific predictions are more broadly applicable: The same theoretical reasoning we have used here suggests that perceptions of stability could influence people’s normative idealizations of other circumstances as well. For instance, people may idealize the type of community they live in—urban versus rural—to the extent that they perceive insurmountable obstacles to relocating to another type of community. People may also idealize their careers to the extent that they believe it is too late to switch to an alternative career track. Future research could examine these and other contexts in which people’s normative ideals and perceptions of others who share their circumstances are shaped by their motivation to rationalize their own circumstances.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Notes

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