People who prioritize personal growth tend to pursue more desirable romantic partners

Two studies of college students’ romantic behaviors indicated that their self-regulatory orientations might influence their aspirations for highly desirable romantic partners. These orientations, directed either toward personal growth or toward security, led to the exaggeration of students’ positive or negative self-perceptions, influencing their willingness to pursue more or less desirable partners. The paper was published in the Journal of Personality.

Self-regulatory orientations are habitual ways of guiding behavior toward desired goals and away from unwanted outcomes. A promotion orientation focuses on growth, achievement, advancement, and the possibility of gains. People with a stronger promotion orientation tend to think about what they could accomplish, improve, or obtain. They tend to be motivated by hopes, aspirations, and opportunities.

A prevention orientation focuses on security, responsibility, safety, and avoiding losses or mistakes. People with a stronger prevention orientation tend to think about what could go wrong and how to prevent negative consequences. They tend to be motivated by duties, obligations, and the need to maintain stability.

Both orientations can be useful, depending on the situation. A promotion orientation may be especially helpful when creativity, exploration, or taking initiative is needed. A prevention orientation may be especially helpful when careful planning, rule-following, and risk reduction are important.

Study author Eileen Z. Wu and her colleagues conducted two studies. In the first study, they explored how self-regulatory orientations predict participants’ perceptions of their own positive traits and the traits they would want in an ideal romantic partner. They also assessed how such perceptions predicted the reported desirability of individuals toward whom the participants expressed romantic interest over the following seven months.

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In their second study, they explored how self-regulatory orientations predicted participants’ assessments of their own positive traits and those of an ideal partner, and how these assessments predicted the desirability of traits possessed by speed-dating partners they encountered during the study.

Participants in the first study were 208 students from a private university in the Midwestern United States. They were all heterosexual, and 91 of them were men. Their average age was 18 years.

Participants completed an assessment of regulatory focus (the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire) and rated how much they believed they possessed a series of different positive traits (e.g., “physically attractive,” “confident,” “exciting,” etc.). Participants also rated whether the traits they rated themselves on mattered in their decision to start a romantic relationship with someone.

Next, across several waves of data collection (once every three weeks), participants rated how much the two people they were currently most interested in forming a romantic relationship with possessed those traits. Across different data collection waves, they could list the same individuals or change the people they were rating. On average, participants listed five unique individuals over the course of the study.

Participants in the second study were 187 students from the same Midwestern private university. Ninety-three were women. At the start of the study, participants completed the same assessments and ratings as in the first study—including self-regulatory orientations, their own positive traits, and those of an ideal romantic partner.

Next, they participated in a speed-dating event in which each participant had a four-minute speed date with 11 or 12 opposite-sex participants. After each speed date, participants rated how much the potential partner they met on the date had the traits from the same set they rated themselves on. The study authors were able to use ratings of the same person produced by different participants to create a consensus, “objective” estimate of that person’s traits. After the session, in an online matching survey, participants rated who among all the people they met they would like to see again.

Results showed that a stronger promotion orientation predicted overly positive self-evaluations. These participants set higher standards for an ideal partner and were more likely to pursue more desirable partners. On the other hand, a stronger prevention orientation predicted overly negative self-evaluations. These participants set lower standards for an ideal partner and were more likely to pursue partners that were less desirable.

These effects persisted even after accounting for general self-esteem and objective ratings of the participants’ actual desirability (derived from the consensus ratings given to the participant by other participants in Study 2).

The study authors tested a statistical model outlining a chain reaction. The model suggested that higher promotion orientation increases the ratings of one’s own desirable traits, which leads to an increased perception of the importance of these desirable traits in an ideal partner. Finally, this increased importance makes an individual more likely to pursue a highly desirable partner.

The model also posited that higher prevention orientation would lead to lower ratings of one’s own desirable traits, lowering ideal standards and resulting in the pursuit of less desirable partners. The results showed that these specific pathways fully explain how regulatory focus dictates romantic pursuit.

“Although people universally want to be with highly desirable romantic partners, not everyone places the same priority on or is willing to risk rejection to pursue such partners,” the study authors concluded.

“Our findings illustrate how the eagerness and increasingly positive expectations about one’s own value as a romantic partner arising from stronger self-regulatory concerns with growth and advancement predict a greater desire for and pursuit of desirable partners and thus provide new insight into when and why people searching for a relationship might look past the reality of their own desirability.”

The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about behavior in romantic relationships. However, it should be noted that the observational design of the study does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results. Additionally, the study participants were exclusively heterosexual university students. Findings on other age, demographic, and sexual orientation groups might differ.

The paper “Promotion- or Prevention-Focused Self-Evaluation and the Preferential Pursuit of More Desirable Romantic Partners” was authored by Eileen Z. Wu, Daniel C. Molden, and Paul W. Eastwick.