Effects of remembering significant others when responding to deception in romantic relationships

Abstract

Consistent with the concept of security priming, it was hypothesized that reminders of significant others providing sense of security would invite individuals to be tolerant of a romantic partner’s lies. Two experiments were conducted to test this hypothesis. Security priming was performed by asking participants to recall a real life experience suggesting their own significant others’ supportiveness. Dependent variables were the responses to hypothetical situations in which a romantic partner had lied and the deception had been discovered. Experiment 1 showed that security priming could reduce the degree of ungenerosity interference in forgiving a partner, after the deception had been discovered. Experiment 2 showed that this effect did not result from the mildness of threat stimuli attributed to the fact that hypothetical situations were written in third person. Taken together, these results suggested that the effect of security priming ease a self-threat produced by a romantic partner’s lies.