Two studies of college students’ romantic behavior show that college students’ self-regulatory orientations can influence their desire for highly desirable romantic partners. These orientations toward personal growth and security led to an exaggeration of students’ positive or negative self-perceptions, which influenced their willingness to pursue more or less desirable partners. The paper was published in. personality journal.
Self-regulatory orientation is a habitual way of directing behavior toward desired goals and away from undesired outcomes. Promotion orientation focuses on growth, achievement, advancement, and profit potential. People with a strong promotion mindset tend to think about what they can accomplish, what they can improve on, and what they can gain. They tend to be motivated by hopes, aspirations, and opportunities.
The prevention orientation focuses on security, responsibility, safety, and avoidance of losses and mistakes. People with a strong prevention orientation tend to think about what could happen and how to prevent negative effects. They tend to be motivated by duty, obligation, and the need to maintain stability.
Both directions are useful, depending on the situation. Advancement orientation is especially useful when creativity, exploration, or initiative is required. A preventive orientation is especially useful when careful planning, following rules, and reducing risks are important.
Study author Eileen Z. Wu and her colleagues conducted two studies. The first study investigated how self-regulatory orientation predicted how participants perceived their own positive characteristics and the characteristics they sought in an ideal romantic partner. They also assessed how such perceptions predicted participants’ reported liking for individuals in whom they expressed romantic interest over a subsequent seven-month period.
The second study investigated how self-regulatory orientation predicted participants’ ratings of their own positive traits and ideal partner positive traits, and how these ratings predicted the desirability of traits possessed by speed dating partners encountered during the study.
Participants in the first study were 208 students at a private university in the Midwest. They were all heterosexual, and 91 of them were men. Their average age was 18 years.
Participants completed a regulatory focus assessment (Regulatory Focus Questionnaire) in which they rated the extent to which they believed they possessed a set of different positive traits (e.g., “physically attractive,” “confident,” “exciting,” etc.). Participants also rated whether the characteristics they rated themselves as important in their decision to start a romantic relationship with someone.
Then, over several rounds of data collection (once every three weeks), participants rated the extent to which the two people they were currently most interested in having a romantic relationship with possessed those characteristics. You may list the same individuals or change who you evaluate across different data collection waves. Over the course of the study, participants named an average of five unique people.
Participants in the second study were 187 students from the same private university in the Midwest. 93 were women. At the beginning of the study, participants completed the same assessments and evaluations as in the first study. This includes self-regulatory orientation, positive characteristics of oneself, and characteristics of an ideal romantic partner.
Next, they attended a speed dating event. In this event, each participant engaged in a 4-minute speed date with 11 to 12 participants of the opposite sex. After each speed date, participants rated the extent to which potential partners they met on that date possessed the same set of characteristics that they rated themselves. Using ratings of the same person made by different participants, the study authors were able to create a consensus “objective” estimate of that person’s characteristics. After the session, participants completed an online matching survey to rate which of the people they met they would like to meet again.
The results showed that a stronger promotion orientation predicted overly positive self-evaluation. These participants set higher standards for their ideal partner and were more likely to pursue a more desirable partner. On the other hand, a strong prevention orientation predicted overly negative self-evaluation. These participants were more likely to set lower standards for an ideal partner and pursue less desirable partners.
These effects persisted even after accounting for general self-esteem and objective ratings of participants’ actual desirability (derived from consensus ratings given to participants by other participants in Study 2).
The study authors tested a statistical model outlining the chain reaction. This model suggested that increased promotion orientation increases evaluations of one’s own desirable traits, which in turn leads to increased perceptions of the importance of these desirable traits in an ideal partner. Finally, this increased importance makes individuals more likely to pursue highly desirable partners.
This model also hypothesized that increased prevention orientation would lead to lower evaluations of one’s own desirable characteristics, lowering ideal standards, and, as a result, pursuing less desirable partners. The results showed that these specific pathways fully explain how regulatory focus influences romantic pursuit.
“While people universally desire to be with a highly desirable romantic partner, not everyone places such a partner at the same priority or is willing to risk rejection to pursue such a partner,” the study authors conclude.
“Our findings show how enthusiasm and increasingly positive expectations about one’s value as a romantic partner, stemming from strong self-regulatory concerns about growth and progress, predict greater desire and pursuit of a desirable partner, thus providing new insight into when and why people seeking relationships ignore their own desired realities.”
This study contributes to scientific knowledge about behavior in romantic relationships. However, we note that the observational design of this study does not allow definitive causal inferences to be drawn from the results. Furthermore, the participants in the study were only heterosexual college students. Findings for other age, demographic, and sexual orientation groups may differ.
The paper, “Promotion- or Prevention-Focused Self-Evaluation and the Prioritized Pursuit of a More Desirable Romantic Partner,” was authored by Eileen Z. Wu, Daniel C. Molden, and Paul W. Eastwick.
