Coherence in Perceptions of a Romantic Relationship

Abstract

When decision makers perceive all issues related to a decision as being consistent with their choice, they achieve coherence.Participants rated their agreement with different views of various issues related to a couple's relationship.Those who later decided whether the couple would get engaged or break up subsequently reinterpreted the issues to be consistent with their decision.Increasing the importance of the decision, highlighting coherent perspectives, or giving participants a prior preference did not strengthen the coherence shift, but coherence shifts did not occur without the chance to decide, suggesting that they occur in an all or nothing fashion.Individuals with higher need for cognition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) achieved a greater degree of coherence among facts associated with the relationship but not among more general beliefs about relationships.

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