Metacognition Of Bias In Romantic Relationships

Does the presence of bias in relationships lead to happiness? There remains a paradox in the study of bias and accuracy in relationship judgments.Several attempts have been made to resolve this apparent contradiction,including making an important distinction between bias and accuracy and postulating moderating variables that influence bias or accuracy.Fletcher & Boyers(2007) put forward that positive bias in intimate relationships was(in part) a conscious phenomenon,adopted by partners to enhance relationship quality as a cognitive strategy.They not only proposed a new resolution to the dilemma,but also created new areas for future research.Based on their theory,a series of studies were conducted to investigate meta-cognition of bias in intimate partner judgments.Study 1 aimed to access individuals' stereotypes of good and bad intimate relationships in order to explore lay theories about the role of biased partner judgments in intimate relationships.Individuals read one of three vignettes depicting a fictional heterosexual couple in a very happy relationship,a moderately happy relationship or an unhappy relationship.Participants then rated the extent to which the fictional partners were likely to be positively biased,negatively biased or unbiased in their judgments of each other.The result showed that,they rated fictional partners in happier relationships as more positively biased in their partner perceptions.Study 2 investigated the meta-awareness of bias in intimate partner judgments with a sample of couples.The main results showed as follows:1.Individuals wanted their partners to view them more positively than their real self.2.Intimates were positively biased in their relationship evaluations.3.Individuals reported that they judged their partners in a positively biased fashion and were,in turn,judged by their partners in a positively biases fashion.Generally, men's meta-cognition was anchored to actual levels of bias at the individual and relationship level while women's data did not show the same effect.4.More actual positive bias was associated with higher levels of perceived relationship quality.5.There were no significant evidence showed that people who perceived themselves as more positively biased were more satisfied with their relationships 6.Men who were more satisfied with their relationships had female partners who perceived the man as more positively biased in judging the man while there was no same effect found in women who were more satisfied.Moreover,the motives and actual evidence of the positive bias in a constructive fashion were found in the interview of two men and two women.In sum,these findings suggest that positive bias in partner judgments can be a normative and consciously accessible feature of romantic relationships and different gender creates different results.