I came across this study described in a little write up on
the Science of Relationships blog, by Samantha Joel. An excellent summary on an excellent
blog.
Samantha Joel describes a study published last year (2011) by
Joshua Ackerman, Vladas Griskevicius, and Norman Li. This follows up perfectly from my last post,
where I suggested that, on average, it was more critical for women to get clear
signals about commitment from men than vice versa as relationships are
progressing—or potentially progressing.
This is because women have a lot more at risk simply because they can
become pregnant and have babies and men do not.
A lot of commitment dynamics and commitment decoding issues
are tied up in that simple biological fact above. I’ve discussed the importance of this in
numerous places. The findings of
Ackerman, Griskevicius, and Li fit perfectly within this thinking. They use some pretty complex evolutionary and
economic theory to make their key points, but I can distill it down pretty
clearly for the current themes on my blog:
On average (it’s always on average, remember that!):
1. Men tend to
express love in a new romantic relationship before women do.
2. Most people
believe it’s the other way around.
3. Men and women have
different emotional reactions to the expression of love before versus after
having sex.
A couple of quotes from the research paper make the
important points rather well:
A
presex confession may signal interest in advancing a relationship to include
sexual activity,whereas a postsex confession may instead more accurately signal
a desire for long-term commitment. (p. 1090)
On
the face of it, this reaction appears to suggest that men are quite interested
in early commitment. However, after the onset of sex in a relationship, men exhibited
somewhat less positivity to confessions of love. (p. 1090)
LOVE ME, LOVE ME
KNOT, LOVE ME NOT
Feelings of feeling in love—and, more importantly,
expressions—can be affected by the desire to have sex. That’s why when an
immediate desire to have sex with the possibility of having sex make for a
confusing picture regarding signals of true long-term interest and
commitment. So, for someone interested in
deeper commitment and/or tying the knot, “love me, love me not” decision situations
are pretty critical. Does it mean
someone wants to become more intertwined—knotted, if you will—just because he
or she says they love you?
As I’ve talked in numerous posts and writings, signals about
commitment are a really big deal in understanding what’s going on in
relationships. If you are looking at a signal that has little signal value
related to what you are trying to discern, you can misread the situation by a
wide margin. And I do think there are
fewer clearer signals related to commitment in developing relationships than
their used to be. I’ll talk about
Facebook pretty soon, as something pretty interesting has emerged there in this
regard—and if you are in the zone of life dealing with all these things
personally, you know where I’ll head on that.
I will end by asking a similar question to the one in the last
post. What truly signals commitment? What do you think? What are you sure of? Does it work the same
way for you as for others you might be romantically interested in? That’s something it may be worth being less
sure about.
If you want to read more, two of my (our) papers get pretty far
into this whole issue of both signaling issues related to commitment and
differences that may often matter related to either gender and/or personality
attachment styles. So, if you want to go
deeper, have at it. Here are links to
two papers.
Our journal article on commitment, signals, attachment, and
the formation of commitment:
"Commitment: Functions, Formation, and the Securing of Romantic Attachment"
My article on men and commitment and why men resist marriage
but say they value it more (on average) than women.
"What is it with Men and Commitment, Anyway?"
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