Show up your hand those you are currently in a relationship. Thank you
Now I would like you to imagine, or may be think back, when it was the last time, when you were at the party and your partner was not with you. Someone cute from across the room, lost eyes with you and smiled, and your heart flattens then oh no! what you doing in that situation, right? Now what previous research has taught us is that finding somebody else attractive when you are in a relationship is very common. But at the same time, our brains has a mechanisms to protect our relationships from outside threat. For example, we will try to rate the attractiveness of opposite sex is lower as compared to a single threats. We will also try to pay them less attention and even when we do pay them less attention, our recall of their attractiveness is actually less accurate as compared to our single threats and all of these are ways by which we protect our relationships from outside threats.
What happens if the outside threat is not a stranger at the party, no one has previously looked at if the the threat to your relationship is someone who is consistently in your life, or more long standing threat your relationship. And this is what I thought to find out. I asked over 750 adults about an experience of attraction they had while they were in a relationship and some of them not with partner, and the behaviour they engaged is fall into 3 broad categories. The first of which is practical points include things like I deleted this person from my phone. Enhancing the relationship, so for example I bought a present for my partner. The third of which is management threat, included behaviours like i told myself about negative consequences if i cheated on my partner.
And behaviours like these were endorsed by over 9 and 10 of my participants which indicates that majority of us are motivated and engaged and trying to protect our relationships from infidelity. What was even more interesting, were the people who use more of these behaviours compared to rest of samples. So I found out that those who are more sexually commissive, those who have more access, those who are more flirtatious towards opposite sex, and those who found themselves in episodes of receipt contraction i.e. the other person was also interested back, tended to use more of these behaviours than the rest of the sample.
And this shows that, there is sensitivity to the level of relationships threats that one can perceive and they amp up their efforts to protect their relationship likewise. This is very interesting that why should I know, what should I do with this information without monogamy elements? What we know that relationships are very important for our wellbeing. On the other hand, we also know that attractions to the people who are not our partners and infidelity by extension are quite common. By knowing more about how we protect our relationships, we can learn to better strengthen them, and increase our own wellbeing to the process.
Speaker, Brenda Lee is a student in the Department of Psychology at the University of New Brunswick Fredericton. Maintaining monogamy in committed romantic relationships won second prize of 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) Eastern Regional competition held at University of New Brunswick Fredericton on Apr 20th, 2017.
