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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 25, No. 2, 162-176 (1999)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167299025002003

Resisting Temptation Revisited: Devaluation Versus Enhancement of an Attractive Suitor by Exclusive and Nonexclusive Daters

Doris G. Bazzini

Appalachian State University, BazziniDG{at}conrad.appstate.edu

David R. Shaffer

University of Georgia

Individuals committed to exclusive relationships often evaluate attractive, opposite-sex targets less favorably than do less committed individuals. This devaluative distortion of alternatives has been interpreted as relationship maintenance by exclusive daters. Two experiments evaluated an alternative hypothesis: Less committed individuals may more favorably evaluate attractive, other-sex targets because they are seeking a relationship. In Experiment 1, exclusive and nonexclusive daters imagined a scenario in which an attractive stranger showed interest in the participant (high threat/high opportunity) or in his or her best friend (low threat/low opportunity). In Experiment 2, exclusive and nonexclusive daters anticipated interacting with an attractive target who was either available/seeking a relationship (high threat/high opportunity) or unavailable for a relationship (low threat/low opportunity). As predicted, nonexclusive daters evaluated available targets more favorably than unavailable ones, showing clear evidence of relationship-seeking motives. However, exclusive daters showed little evidence of devaluing available targets in the interest of relationship maintenance.


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