Do You See What I See? Actor and Partner Attachment Shape Biased Perceptions of Partners

Abstract

The present research examined how actor and partner attachment insecurity relates to biases in perceptions of partners' core relationship-relevant constructs. Across three dyadic studies ( N = 333, N = 666), we examined attachment anxiety and avoidance as predictors of over- or underestimation of partners' relationship satisfaction, commitment, and responsiveness, using partners' own reports as the reference point for evaluating bias. Actors higher in avoidance and actors with partners higher in avoidance perceived their partners to be less satisfied and committed. In addition, actors higher in avoidance and actors higher in anxiety displayed a pessimistic bias, perceiving their partners to be less satisfied and committed than their partners reported being. Finally, actors with partners higher in avoidance displayed an optimistic bias, perceiving their partners to be more satisfied and committed than their partners reported being. Results underscore the importance of adopting a dyadic perspective on perceptual biases in romantic relationships.

Reflections on a registered report replicating a body of dyadic cross‐sectional research

“… Note : Deviations from what was reported in the registered report are highlighted in italics. These include the following: a) in Rodriguez et al (2019), there were hypotheses for the effects of partner attachment on responsiveness discrepancies that were not extracted or preregistered for analysis; b) changing reporting from partially standardized estimates for the discrepancy outcomes in the original data extracted from Rodriguez et al (2019) to fully standardized estimates; and c) adjusting estimates and p ‐values for several erroneously extracted original studies. None of these changed the sign nor significance of estimates with the exception of H2B from Study 2 of Nguyen et al (2018), which was originally reported as statistically significant.…”

“…Of these 15 eligible research items, 7 items were unique (i.e., the other 8 were overlapping: for instance, a finding that was both presented as a poster and published in a manuscript). The seven research items, in turn, contributed 116 dyadic cross-sectional estimates from 12 separately reported studies (Baker, Chopik, & Nguyen, under review;Baker, Nguyen, Knee, & Petit, 2018;Haddad et al, 2016;Hadden, Baker, & Knee, 2018;Hadden, Rodriguez, Knee, DiBello, & Baker, ;Rodriguez et al, 2019).…”

“…In line with similar online recruitment methods, we estimated that the average participant would be approximately 32 years of age (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). All samples from the original studies included at least one university student (Rodriguez et al, 2019; Study 1 also required that dyads be married and at least one member of the dyad be an alcohol consumer). As a result, the current RR was not a direct replication because it used a slightly different sample.…”

“…For instance, Rodriguez et al (2019) reported two separate studies that tested identical associations between attachment and commitment using the same measures. In the present replication, these measures were only administered to participants once but were used to estimate replication rates for both studies in Rodriguez et al (2019). This report treats these as unique tests (i.e., the number of tests reported reflects the number of statistically significant effects from the original reports), but they are not truly independent.…”

Preprint: Perception of Communal Motives in Couples: Accuracy, Bias, and their Associations with Relationship Length

“…In line with previous research (e.g., Gable, 2006;Kuster et al, 2015;Pusch et al, 2020;Sanderson & Cantor, 2001;Strachman & Gable, 2006), we expected a strong explicit desire for closeness and a strong pnCommunion Approach to be associated with an overestimation, and a strong pnCommunion Avoidance to be associated with an underestimation of the partner's communal motives (as indicated by positive and negative bias effects, respectively). We addressed our hypotheses with Actor-Partner Interdependence Models (Kenny et al, 2006) which are well established and widely used in research on partner perception (e.g., Campbell et al, 2013;Clark et al, 2017;Kenny & Acitelli, 2001;Rodriguez et al, 2018).…”