Top

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

Published in:

01-06-2015 | Original Paper

The Look that Binds: Partner-Directed Altruistic Motivation and Biased Perception in Married Couples

Authors: Raluca Petrican, Alexander Todorov, Christopher T. Burris, R. Shayna Rosenbaum, Cheryl Grady

Published in: Journal of Nonverbal Behavior | Issue 2/2015

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

A trustworthy appearance is regarded as a marker of a globally positive personality and, thus, evokes a host of benevolent responses from perceivers. Nevertheless, it is yet to be determined whether the reverse is also true, that is, whether social targets who evoke unambiguously benign motivations in perceivers are regarded as possessing a more trustworthy appearance (cf. Oosterhof and Todorov in Emotion 9:128–133, 2008). To this end, elderly long-term married couples completed measures of partner-directed altruistic motivation, accommodative behaviors, marital satisfaction, and trust in the partner. They also completed a face-processing task involving spousal and stranger faces 1 year later. Higher motivation to prioritize a spouse’s well-being (but none of the other relationship functioning variables assessed) predicted perceiving one’s spouse’s emotionally neutral face as being more trustworthy-looking. Results are discussed in the context of the reciprocal relationship between higher-order motivational processes and basic perceptual mechanisms in shaping relational climates.

previous article The Vertical Dimension of Social Relations and Accurate Interpersonal Perception: A Meta-Analysis

next article Look Me in the Eye: Manipulated Eye Gaze Affects Dominance Mindsets

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

The sample is the same as the one used in Petrican et al. (2014). Nevertheless, there is no overlap in the discussed measures, although in the Control Analyses section, we verify that the main predictor variable from Petrican et al., the participants' software-based facial trustworthiness (cf. Oosterhof and Todorov 2008), did not impact our present findings.

Batson, C. D. (1990). How social an animal? The human capacity for caring. American Psychologist, 45, 336–346.CrossRef

Brewer, M. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love or outgroup hate? Journal of Social Issues, 55, 429–444.CrossRef

Campbell, L., & Kashy, D. A. (2002). Estimating actor, partner, and interaction effects for dyadic data using PROC MIXED and HLM: A guided tour. Personal Relationships, 9, 327–342.CrossRef

Finkel, E. J., & Campbell, W. K. (2001). Self-control and accommodation in close relationships: An interdependence analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 263–277.CrossRefPubMed

Finkenauer, C., Kerkhof, P., Righetti, F., & Branje, S. (2009). Living together apart: Perceived concealment as a signal of exclusion in marital relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1410–1422.CrossRefPubMed

Hewstone, M., Rubin, M., & Willis, H. (2002). Intergroup bias. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 575–604.CrossRefPubMed

Hox, J. (2002). Multilevel analysis techniques and applications. Quantitative methodology series. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Karremans, J. C., Dotsch, R., & Corneille, O. (2011). Romantic relationship status biases memory of faces of attractive opposite-sex others: Evidence from a reverse correlation paradigm. Cognition, 121, 422–426.CrossRefPubMed

Lydon, J. E., Fitzsimons, G. M., & Naidoo, L. (2003). Devaluation versus enhancement of attractive alternatives: A critical test using the calibration paradigm. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 349–359.CrossRefPubMed

Maner, J. K., Gailliot, M. T., & Miller, S. L. (2009). The implicit cognition of relationship maintenance: Inattention to attractive alternatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 174–179.CrossRef

Mather, M., & Carstensen, L. L. (2005). Aging and motivated cognition: The positivity effect in attention and memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 496–502.CrossRefPubMed

Miller, R. S. (1997). Inattentive and contented: Relationship commitment and attention to alternatives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 758–766.CrossRef

Murray, S., & Holmes, J. (2009). The architecture of interdependent minds: A motivation-management theory of mutual responsiveness. Psychological Review, 116, 908–928.CrossRefPubMed

Murray, S. L., Holmes, J. G., & Griffin, D. W. (1996). The benefits of positive illusions: Idealization and the construction of satisfaction in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 79–98.CrossRef

Murray, S., Holmes, J., & Pinkus, R. T. (2010). A smart unconscious? Procedural origins of automatic partner attitudes in marriage. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 650–656.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed

Nezlek, J. B. (2008). An introduction to multilevel modeling for social and personality psychology. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 842–860.CrossRef

Norton, R. (1983). Measuring marital quality: A critical look. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 45, 141–151.CrossRef

Oosterhof, N. N., & Todorov, A. (2008). The functional basis of face evaluation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, 11087–11092.CrossRef

Oosterhof, N. N., & Todorov, A. (2009). Shared perceptual basis of emotional expressions and trustworthiness impressions from faces. Emotion, 9, 128–133.CrossRefPubMed

Penton-Voak, I. S., Rowe, A. C., & Williams, J. (2007). Through rose-tinted glasses: Relationship satisfaction and representations of partners’ facial attractiveness. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 5, 169–181.CrossRef

Petrican, R., Todorov, A. T., & Grady, C. L. (2014). Personality at face value: Facial appearance predicts self and other personality judgments in elderly married couples. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 38, 259–277.CrossRef

Porter, S., ten Brinke, L., & Gustaw, C. (2010). Dangerous decisions: The impact of first impressions of trustworthiness on the evaluation of legal evidence and defendant culpability. Psychology, Crime and Law, 16, 477–491.CrossRef

Raudenbush, S., Bryk, A., & Congdon, R. (2013). HLM 7.0 for Windows [hierarchical linear and nonlinear modeling software]. Multivariate Software, Inc.

Rempel, J. K., & Burris, C. T. (2005). Let me count the ways: An integrative theory of love and hate. Personal Relationships, 12, 297–313.CrossRef

Rempel, J. K., & Holmes, J. G. (1986). How do I trust thee? Psychology Today, 20, 28–34.

Rempel, J. K., Young, J. R., & Burris, C. T. (2008). A many-splendored motive. Poster presented at the at the 9th Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Albuquerque, NM, USA.

Rezlescu, C., Duchaine, B., Olivola, C. Y., & Chater, N. (2012). Unfakeable facial configurations affect strategic choices in trust games with or without information about past behavior. PLoS ONE, 7, e34293.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed

Righetti, F., & Finkenauer, C. (2011). If you are able to control yourself, I will trust you: The role of perceived self-control in interpersonal trust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 874–886.CrossRefPubMed

Rule, N. O., Krendl, A. C., Ivcevic, Z., & Ambady, N. (2013). Accuracy and consensus in judgments of trustworthiness from faces: Behavioral and neural correlates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 409–426.CrossRefPubMed

Said, C. P., Sebe, N., & Todorov, A. (2009). Structural resemblance to emotional expressions predicts evaluation of emotionally neutral faces. Emotion, 9, 260–264.CrossRefPubMed

Swami, V., Waters, L., & Furnham, A. (2010). Perceptions and meta-perceptions of self and partner physical attractiveness. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 811–814.CrossRef

Todorov, A., & Engell, A. (2008). The role of the amygdala in implicit evaluation of emotionally neutral faces. Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience, 3, 303–312.CrossRef

Todorov, A., Said, C. P., Engell, A. D., & Oosterhof, N. N. (2008). Understanding evaluation of faces on social dimensions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 455–460.CrossRefPubMed

van’t Wout, M., & Sanfey, A. G. (2008). Friend or foe: The effect of implicit trustworthiness judgments in social decision making. Cognition, 108, 796–803.CrossRef

Wieselquist, J., Rusbult, C., Foster, C., & Agnew, C. (1999). Commitment, pro-relationship behavior, and trust in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 942–966.CrossRefPubMed

Yovetich, N. A., & Rusbult, C. E. (1994). Accommodative behavior in close relationships: Exploring transformation of motivation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 138–164.CrossRef

Zebrowitz, L. A., Voinescu, L., & Collins, M. A. (1996). “Wide-eyed”and “crooked-faced”: Determinants of perceived and real honesty across the life span. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 1258–1269.CrossRef

Title: The Look that Binds: Partner-Directed Altruistic Motivation and Biased Perception in Married Couples
Authors: Raluca Petrican
Alexander Todorov
Christopher T. Burris
R. Shayna Rosenbaum
Cheryl Grady
Publication date: 01-06-2015
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Journal of Nonverbal Behavior / Issue 2/2015
Print ISSN: 0191-5886
Electronic ISSN: 1573-3653
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-014-0203-3