Lonely hearts and angry minds: Online dating rejection increases male (but not female) hostility

The present work explores the hostile tendencies elicited by romantic rejection in the increasingly common context of online dating. To empirically investigate this issue, we created an ad hoc online dating platform in which fictitious online dating partners romantically rejected heterosexual male and female participants. Results revealed that male—but not female—participants who were rejected by desired dating partners displayed increased hostility. This pattern of findings was consistent across different measures, which considered both aggressive tendencies against the rejecting partners and hostile attitudes against the opposite gender. Further, increased feelings of anger explained the relationship between online romantic rejection and increased male hostility. Our work and its findings have both theoretical and methodological implications for the understanding of interpersonal processes in online interactions and the growing body of literature on online dating.     

What if your partner…? A situated decision-making approach to romantic competence in young adulthood

Individuals are likely to vary in their abilities to enact appropriate relationship behavior. With the aim of quantifying such differences, young adult participants were asked to rate the likelihood that they would respond to simulated relationship challenges in different ways and such responses were transformed into a Romantic Competence-Behavioral Tendency (RC-BT) metric through the use of several innovations. Three studies (total N = 496) then showed that higher RC-BT scores were predictive of prosocial feelings for the partner in combination with lesser aggression. Further, both participants and their partners were more satisfied and committed to their relationships with higher RC individuals. The findings provide support for a new way of thinking about romantic competence that builds on situated decision-making processes.     

The honest mirror: Morality as a moderator of spontaneous behavioral mimicry

Two studies examined whether morality-related information has a greater impact than sociability- or competence-related information upon the spontaneous mimicry of an interaction partner. Participants were video recorded during an interaction with a confederate previously presented as moral versus lacking morality, or sociable versus lacking sociability (Study 1), or competent versus lacking competence (Study 2). Two coders rated the extent to which participants imitated the gestures of the confederate, participants’ postural openness, and the general smoothness of the interaction. When the confederate lacked moral qualities, mimicry and postural openness were lower, and the interaction was less smooth than when the confederate was highly moral, unsociable, or incompetent. Moreover, our findings showed that global impression is the key mediating mechanism driving such an effect. Indeed, knowing that another person behaved immorally resulted in a negative impression, which in turn hindered behavioral mimicry.