We have all been in love at one time or another. The joy flows, the hormones are on the surface and the only thing we really want is to be with the person next to us. It does not occur to us to look the other way or think about maintaining a parallel relationship. However, who would have thought that when we are happy we see other people uglier than they really are?
Shana Cole, a researcher in the department of psychology at Rutgers University, United States, decided to conduct research on this topic. For this it had more than 250 people, men and women. Those in a relationship were asked to answer several questions, including how happy they were with their partner .
Later, a series of images of faces of the opposite sex were projected to them, so that they could evaluate if that person was in a relationship, was single or was looking for something serious. Every time an image passed, another one appeared that had previously been manipulated in order to appear much more attractive. For example, they had improved the symmetry of the face, an attractive aspect according to other studies.
Once this was done, they were asked to evaluate these 11 faces in order to know if they seemed more or less genuine. Their responses confirmed the suspicions. People who were in a relationship considered their faces uglier than those who were single. This result intensified the happier the couples were.
Colle et al. Believe that belittling other people is an unconscious defense mechanism , which allows monogamy to be preserved and possible threats to the partner are eliminated. They suggest that the same thing happens with situations that require greater self-control such as when we have to do work, or want to resist the temptation to make a call.
Raquel Graña writes on the web Intimasconexiones.com
