The changing tides of attractive alternatives in romantic relationships: Recent societal changes compel new directions for future research

Abstract

Societal changes over recent decades have drastically transformed the frequency and manner in which people are exposed to attractive alternative relationship partners, arguably resulting in such alternatives posing a greater threat to committed relationships now than ever before. Yet despite a growing need for novel research on attractive alternatives, research on this topic has failed to account for such changes and thus is growing stagnant. Specifically, although interdependence perspectives and supporting research have consistently and robustly demonstrated that (a) attractive alternatives threaten committed relationships and (b) committed partners protect their relationships by devaluing such alternatives, research has yet to examine how the changing nature of attractive alternatives might affect these processes.To this end, the present article first reviews foundational theory and research that guided the study of attractive alternatives and then highlights how recent societal changes (e.g., technology that increases access to attractive alternatives, increasingly diverse relationship types, the emerging desire to remain single) diverge from this research and thus warrant new directions. We encourage researchers to expand how they study attractive alternatives and to ultimately reignite research on this increasingly important topic.

Responding to threatening online alternatives: Perceiving the partner’s commitment through their social media behaviors

“…Perhaps the manipulation needs a more realistic transition from inducing alternative threat to inducing partner buffering to make them more believable, especially for anxious people who may already be skeptical of the partner’s commitment level (Campbell et al, 2005). Brady and Baker (2022, p. 2) emphasized, “there is a critical need to expand how attractive alternatives are conceptualized and studied.” This sentiment, coupled with the prevalence of alternatives found online (Muise et al, 2009), suggests that future research should continue to assess how online alternatives pose threats to committed relationships.…”

Pathways to online infidelity: the roles of perceived online dating success, perceived availability of alternative partners, and mate value discrepancy

“…Indeed, a large body of research suggests that the perception of potentially attractive alternatives to a current partner is a strong predictor of low commitment to the current partner (Le & Agnew, 2003;Le et al, 2010). As such, to the extent to which online dating success can increase perceptions of alternative mate quality and/or quantity (Brady & Baker, 2022), this success may also increase the likelihood of infidelity.…”