Murray Sandra L. - Motivated Cognition in Relationships: In Pursuit of Safety and Value

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MOTIVATED COGNITION IN RELATIONSHIPS

How can newlyweds believe they will be together forever, while knowing that the majority of marriages end in divorce? Why do people who desperately want to be loved end up alienating those who love them? How can partners that seem like complete opposites end up blissfully happy? This volume explores such fascinating questions. Murray and Holmes outline how basic motivations to be safe from being hurt and find value and meaning control how people feel, think, and behave in close relationships. Additionally, the authors highlight how these motivations infuse romantic life through succinct and accessible descriptions of cutting-edge empirical research and vivid evolving stories of four couples confronting different challenges in their relationship. Integrating ideas from the interdependence, goals, and embodiment literatures, this book puts a provocative new spin on seminal findings from two decades of collaborative research.

The book:

provides a new, interdependence-based, perspective on motivated cognition in close relationships;

advances a dyadic perspective that explores how motivation shapes perception and cognition in ways that result in motivation-consistent behavior;

examines how goal-driven cognition translates a persons wishes, desires, and preferences into judgment and behavior, and ultimately, his or her romantic partners relationship reality;

offers a refreshing argument that the ultimate effects of motivated cognition on satisfaction and stability depend on whether the motivations which most frequently guide perception and cognition match the reality constraints imposed by the perceiver, the partner, and the characteristics of the relationship.

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This book is essential for social and personality psychologists and will also be valuable to clinical psychologists and clinicians who work directly with couples to effect happier and more stable relationships. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students will find it a highly engaging compendium for understanding how motivation shapes affect, cognition, and behavior in close relationships.

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MOTIVATED
COGNITION IN
RELATIONSHIPS

The Pursuit of Belonging

Sandra L. Murray
John G. Holmes

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First published 2017
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2017 Taylor & Francis

The right of Sandra L. Murray and John G. Holmes to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN: 978-1-84871-519-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-84872-520-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-22548-7 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
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We dedicate this book to Colin, Derek, and Lynda.

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We are tremendously grateful to the many students and research colleagues who enriched the research we describe in this book. Their names populate the pages that follow. We also owe a special debt to Ziva Kunda, whose theorizing defined our thinking about motivated cognition. Memories of her as a mentor, colleague, and friend continue to inspire us today. We are also grateful to Monica Biernat for her astute editorial counsel. A National Science Foundation awarded to S. L. Murray (BCS-1143747) supported the preparation of this book.

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Sandra L. Murray is a Professor of Psychology at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. Her research examines the automatic and controlled processes involved in the regulation of self-esteem, trust, and commitment in relationships. Her scholarship has received multiple awards, including Mid-Career Distinguished Contribution Awards from the International Association of Relationships Research (2016) and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (2012), Early Career Distinguished Contribution Awards from the American Psychological Association (2003) and the International Society of Self and Identity (2001), and Best New Contribution Awards from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (2007) and the International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships (1998, 2000). Her research has been supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation. She has held Associate Editor positions at Personality and Social Psychology Review , Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology .

John G. Holmes is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His research focuses on the cognitive and motivational processes involved in perceiving anothers motives. His teaching and scholarship have received multiple awards, including the Distinguished Career Award (2016) and Distinguished Mentoring Award (2004) from the International Association of Relationships Research, Best New Contribution Awards from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (2007) and the International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships (1992, 1998, 2000), a commemorative page on the Heritage Wall of Fame (2014), and a University Research Chair from his home institution (20042012). His research has been supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and he served as an Associate Editor at Journal of Personality and Social Psychology .

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Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.

Voltaire

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

Friedrich Nietzsche, On Reading and Writing

Love is not blind it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.

Rabbi Julius Gordon

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

Robert Frost

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.

Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown in Peanuts

Social philosophers have long taken pen to paper to try to capture the essence of romantic love. Even the most haphazard samplings of their musings reveal the shared belief that love involves more than meets the eye. Falling in and out of love is thought to be transformative turning what meets the eye into something that pleases or displeases the eye or even the taste buds (as in the case of the crestfallen Charlie Brown).

This process of transformation is the topic of this book. The idea that love transforms perception, cognition, and behavior is no stranger to anyone who has ever been in love or to anyone who has ever given advice to anyone who has ever been in love. It is certainly no stranger to social psychologists. Scholars of motivated cognition now take it as a given that personal wishes, desires, and preferences color the inferences people make about the social world (Balcetis & Dunning, 2010; Kunda, 1990).