Relationship Protection Against Attractive Alternatives

The current study investigated whether a strategy shown to enhance closeness between close others – capitalization of positive events – might reduce the influence of attractive alternative partners on perceptions of commitment and willingness to accommodate a romantic partner’s faults. Participants were college-students who were given the opportunity to describe positive events surrounding a romantic partner or a close other and then exposed to either attractive or unattractive alternative partners (threat to a relationship) via an online survey. Participants then completed measures of commitment and accommodation. Inconsistent with previous research, no difference across the two threat conditions or capitalization conditions emerged for reported commitment or constructive accommodation strategies. Participants accommodated constructively across all conditions.Males, however, were more constructively accommodative partners when presented with low threat alternatives and given the opportunity to capitalize about their romantic partner. Females did not show this tendency.