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People in cohabiting relationships often knew when they were helping or hindering their partner’s goals, but they tended to underestimate the ways they got in the way, and those overly positive self-views were linked to poorer relationship outcomes. This research was published in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
People’s personal goals are often shaped by their closest relationships. A partner can make a goal easier to pursue by offering encouragement, joining in, creating time or space, or just not making the goal harder. But partners can also obstruct each other’s goals, sometimes directly and sometimes unintentionally, through competing needs, conflicting routines, or everyday frictions.
This is significant because goal progress is associated with well-being, and romantic partners’ goal systems often become intertwined. Emily Connard and colleagues examined whether people can accurately recognize their own influence on their partner’s daily goals. The authors were especially interested in whether people show “tracking accuracy,” meaning their self-perceptions correspond with their partner’s reports, and whether they also show bias, such as assuming that they affect their partner in the same way their partner affects them.
The study also examined whether these misperceptions carry relational costs. Seeing oneself too positively might protect a person from discomfort, especially when acknowledging obstruction could feel threatening. However, people who fail to notice that they are making their partner’s goals harder to achieve may miss chances to adjust, respond, or repair the relationship.
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The researchers analyzed data from 212 participants, or 106 cohabiting couples, living in the United States. Couples were recruited through websites such as Craigslist, with advertisements posted in major U.S. cities. To participate, both partners had to be over 18, speak English, have daily internet access, and live together.
Participants first completed intake questionnaires. If both partners completed the intake materials and passed attention checks, they moved into a 14-day daily diary phase. Each night before bed, partners independently completed brief reports about that day. The final analyses used 2,377 daily reports from the 106 couples.
Each day, participants rated whether their partner made it easier for them to make progress toward their goals, using a seven-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. They also rated whether they themselves made it easier for their partner to make goal progress. Goal obstruction was measured by asking participants whether their partner made it more difficult for them to make progress, and whether they made it more difficult for their partner to make progress. Daily relationship satisfaction was assessed using a modified item from the Investment Model Scale, and daily closeness was assessed with an item asking how close participants felt to their partner that day.
The researchers tested whether people’s self-ratings matched their partner’s reports, whether people projected their own experience onto their partner, and whether people systematically overestimated or underestimated their impact.
People showed some tracking accuracy. On days when partners reported that a participant had been more helpful to their goals, that participant also tended to rate themselves as more helpful. The same pattern appeared for obstruction. When partners reported more obstruction, participants tended to report that they had been more obstructive. This suggests people were not completely unaware of their daily impact.
At the same time, people also showed projection. When participants felt that their partner had helped their own goals, they were more likely to see themselves as helping their partner’s goals. When they felt obstructed by their partner, they were more likely to see themselves as obstructing their partner. This may partly reflect real interdependence, where in cohabiting relationships, one partner’s goal conflict can readily affect both partners.
People were generally accurate, on average, about how instrumental they were to their partner’s goals. But they tended to underestimate how much they obstructed their partner’s goals. In other words, people seemed more willing or able to recognize their helpfulness than their hindrance.
These misperceptions were tied to relationship outcomes. When people overestimated how instrumental they were, they reported lower relationship satisfaction, and their partners reported lower closeness and satisfaction. When people underestimated how obstructive they were, both they and their partners felt less close, and partners also felt less satisfied. Overall, the pattern suggested that being overly positive about one’s impact was not harmless, such that, accuracy appeared to be better for both parties.
The study sample was drawn from people living in the United States and was predominantly White, so the findings may not generalize across cultural or demographic groups. Further, without observer reports, it is difficult to know whether discrepancies reflected self-misperception, partner overreporting, or both.
The research, “Do people know how they impact their Partner’s goal pursuit? Accuracy, bias, and associations with relationship outcomes,” was authored by Emily Connard, Jenna L. Kilian, Judith Gere, and Jessica E. LaBuda.
