RESEARCH PROJECTS
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The Importance of Partner Self-Worth
Using experimental, observational, and daily diary methodologies, this work challenges traditional assumptions about the importance of self-love in healthy relationships. Instead, how people’s partners feel about their worthiness of love and acceptance may be the ticket to understanding people’s own responses to relationship threat.
Our work has revealed that rejection from a low (vs. high) self-esteem partner reduces accessibility to connection related thoughts in memory, increases connection-inhibiting behavior during conflict, and is experienced as mentally exhausting. These effects emerge despite evidence from both self-report and independent coding that rejection from a low self-esteem partner is not more painful than rejection from a high self-esteem partner. Moreover, partner self-esteem is consistently a better predictor of these variables than actor self-esteem. We believe people may use impressions of others’ self-esteem to determine whether they should reduce dependence on that partner following rejection (Peterson, De Hart, Bellows, Guigere, & Sherman, 2019 JESP).
In related work, we are currently exploring whether acceptance from a low self-esteem partner is more rewarding than acceptance from a high self-esteem partner. One reason people may suppress motivations for connection after rejection stemming from a low self-esteem partner is because attempts at re-connection, even when met favorably, are less satiating.
Regulating Mental Closeness with Others
Given that people incorporate potential romantic partner characteristics into the self-concept, the goal of this research is twofold. First, we’ve been exploring whether the potential for self-expansion in a new relationship has cognitive tradeoffs for mental closeness in other relationships, such as best friendships. Second, because people often experience a painful contraction of the self-concept and a sense of lost identity after a romantic relationship has ended, we’ve been testing the possibility that people reincorporate friends back into the self-concept post-breakup as a way to combat such pain.
Preliminary results suggest that people who are optimistic about romantic acceptance reduce mental overlap with friends when faced with the potential for self-expansion in a new relationship. On the other hand, people more hurt by romantic rejection increase mental overlap with friends following romantic breakups, potentially as a way to combat self-contraction. These results suggest people will increase or decrease this self-other overlap with others in strategic ways (Peterson, Symonds, Durkee, & Wuerdeman, in preparation)
We are currently extending this work in an attempt to understand this process in an aging population (65+). That is, this type of strategic self-expansion or contraction may predict health-related outcomes for older adults as they navigate new relationship challenges and successes at this stage in life (e.g., loss of a spouse or other loved ones, children moving home or away, birth of grandchildren, new or dissolving friendships, etc.).
Identity Threats and Consumer Behavior
In this work we are running a series of studies designed to explore the direct and indirect effects of sexism on women’s adherence to traditional gender norms. While our research has largely focused on interpersonal rejection in the context of close relationships (i.e., romantic relationships), we have been re-conceptualizing interpersonal rejection in ways that allow us to study the same types phenomena from a broader social perspective. For example, previous work from the lab suggests that romantically rejected (vs. non-rejected) women are willing to pay more money for cosmetic products (i.e., mascara, anti-aging cream, foundation, lipstick) as a way to re-establish their social value as a mate (Sherman, Peterson, & Bryan, in preparation). Given that the experience of sexism is interpersonally threatening and interpersonal threats should elicit behavior aimed at repairing social value, we originally believed that women exposed to sexism would overvalue products, like cosmetics, which may be perceived as a way to augment women’s social value. However, preliminary results indicate that exposure to hostile and benevolent sexism reduce women’s valuation of cosmetic products (Deveau, Peterson Collarossi, & Hamilton, data collection ongoing).
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The Power of Physical Touch
Previous research suggests that a brief touch from a stranger can increase people’s perceptions of security resulting in increases in exploratory or adventurous behavior. We are currently exploring whether the impact of physical touch extends to attitudes towards casual sex, sensation seeking, and curiosity, and whether this effect is moderated by gender. Preliminary results suggest that women show increases in curiosity, sensation seeking, and approval of casual sex when they are in the physical touch (vs. control) condition - while men show decreases in curiosity, sensation seeking, and approval of casual sex in the physical touch condition (vs. control) condition. We believe that men and women respond differently to an interpersonal touch by decreasing or increasing their exploratory and sexual attitudes. The observed gender differences may be best explained by using a dynamic socio-evolutionary approach (Durkee, Peterson, Wuerdeman, & Symonds, data collection ongoing).