Kindness, a problem in choosing a partner

The partner choice It is one of the decisions that are made the most, the ones that we seem to give the most importance to and one of the ones that can have the greatest consequences.

However, true compatibility is difficult to find, and some might say that many couples seem to have originated from a wrong decision. So if partner choice is so important, Why do these elections go wrong so often?

Kindness seems to be a stumbling block when choosing a partner

Much of the psychological studies on this subject take as variables fixed characteristics, such as the level of wealth, objective data on the physical, etc. However, we must also take into account variables that occur on the ground and that only exist in the personal relationship we have with others. Could there be something in that way of relating that influences us when it comes to establishing romantic relationships? We already have studies pointing in that direction.

Investigation

A research team at the University of Toronto has concluded that one of the explanations for an unfortunate choice of partner could be, in short, this:

we are too nice.

Rejecting someone is a difficulty that you are not always willing to overcome, and empathy (or cordiality, or kindness, or courtesy) can make us very open to the possibility of meeting with all kinds of people... even those that are incompatible with us.

Taking as a starting point the assumption that human beings have social tendencies that lead us to put ourselves in the place of the other and to be friendly with others (or, looked at another way, to avoid conflict), the team carried out an experiment to observe how this predisposition to empathy affected when choosing partner. To do this, they invited several men and women as experimental subjects, all of these people being single and interested in dating. Each of them, individually, were shown three profiles with various data about three different people.

The experimental subject then decided which of these three profiles was the most desirable as a possible date. Once this was done, the experimental subject was provided with more information about the person he had chosen: it was a data set between the which there are characteristics that the person has previously indicated as exclusive, that is, they eliminate the person who has these qualities as possible partner.

Once this information was received, the person was asked if she would be interested in establishing contact with the person described in the reports. In other words, if they were interested in having the possibility of dating her.

The importance of get along

However, from this point on the experiment forked into two variants. Some people were told that the potential better half was right there in the lab, in an adjoining room. Another group of participants were asked to imagine that this person was in the next room.

This means that one group of participants was more empathically conditioned than the other, by feeling that personal proximity with a person who, at least on paper, did not meet the characteristics that they were looking for.

Were the results different in both groups?

Clearly different. In the group of those who only had to imagine the proximity of the other person, hardly 17% of the participants stated that they wanted to meet the other person.

Instead, In the group of those who believed they were close to the other person, more than a third accepted. Furthermore, when asked what prompted them to make that decision, the scientists found a combination of self-interest and a spirit of generosity. Concern for the feelings of the other clearly influenced, at the cost of the predisposition to reject possible partners.

However, it is not clear that this trend has to be a source of unhappiness. Of course, it can be if the empathy masks important incompatibilities that are revealed as the The relationship progresses, until it reaches a point where these problems take on more prominence than the desire not to hurt the other. On the other hand, it can also originate romantic relationships where a priori there were only prejudices and banal ideas about how the ideal partner has to be, and this in turn would strengthen empathy and emotional ties gradually. As in many other things, time seems to be a deciding factor when evaluating a personal relationship.