Angry Hugs and Withheld Love: An Overview of Deceptive Affection

Horan, Sean M.; Booth‐Butterfield, Melanie

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-96334-1_28

Cited by 2 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…This is not surprising, as AET holds that affectionate communication serves to maintain our relationship (Floyd, 2006). We further supported the claim that DAMs are a relational maintenance technique (Horan & Booth-Butterfield, 2019) by demonstrating that the relation between DAMs and general mate retention was mediated by the perceived risk of partner infidelity (Hypothesis 1b). Those who enacted DAMs were more likely to enact general mate retention behaviors, and this was because they thought their partner might be unfaithful toward them.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

“…One of the times to engage in mate retention, then, is when there is a perceived risk of partner infidelity Caton, Redlick, & O'Shannessy, forthcoming;Starratt, Shackelford, Goetz, & McKibbin, 2007). Kaighobadi et al (2012) showed that women who pretend orgasm (a DAM; Denes et al, 2019;Horan & Booth-Butterfield, 2019) enact more cost-inflicting mate retention, and this association was mediated by the perceived risk of partner infidelity. They interpreted these findings such that pretending orgasm may be a form of mate retention used to thwart partner infidelity.…”

Section: Perceived Risk Of Partner Infidelitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Deceptive Affectionate Messages: Mate Retention Deployed Under the Threat of Partner Infidelity

Caton

Horan

2019

Evol Psychol

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Deceptive affectionate messages (DAMs) have been proposed to act as relational maintenance techniques and, as such, might be part of a greater repertoire of mate retention behaviors. We analyzed data from 1,993 Mechanical Turk participants to examine the relations between DAMs and mate retention, and whether these relations were mediated by the perceived risk of partner infidelity. In line with predictions, frequency of DAMs positively predicted general mate retention and cost-inflicting mate retention through the perceived risk of partner infidelity. In line with our nondirectional prediction, we also found that frequency of DAMs negatively predicted benefit-provisioning mate retention behaviors. In an exploratory mediation analysis of DAMs on benefit-provisioning mate retention via perceived partner infidelity, we surprisingly found that DAMs negatively predicted benefitprovisioning behavior due to the perceived risk of partner infidelity, suggesting that DAMs-but not benefit-provisioning mate retention-are deployed under the threat of partner infidelity. Overall, these findings suggest that DAMs might belong to a greater repertoire of mate retention (especially cost-inflicting) behaviors to thwart the possibility of partner infidelity.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Section: Perceived Risk Of Partner Infidelitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Deceptive Affectionate Messages: Mate Retention Deployed Under the Threat of Partner Infidelity

Caton

Horan

2019

Evol Psychol

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“…This describes a deceptive affectionate message (DAM) which occurs when a communicator expresses affectionate messages that are not consistent with his/her/their internal feelings of affection in the moment (Horan & Booth-Butterfield, 2011). DAMs are commonly expressed in romantic relationships (e.g., an average of three times per week; Horan & Booth-Butterfield, 2013), and are argued to function as both relational maintenance (Horan & Booth-Butterfield, 2013; 2019) and retention (Caton & Horan, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Collectively then, these variables were selected because we consider them to be (1) the logical empirical choice, (2) logically related to the phrasing of AET’s subpostulate 3a, (3) capable of integration under an evolved perceptual system directed at subpostulate 3a, and (4) the next step to advance deceptive affection research, as all predictors under examination are yet unexplored in conjunction with another and contribute to the developing theoretically-derived hypothesis that deceptive affection functions as a relational maintenance behavior/technique (Horan & Booth-Butterfield, 2013; 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Deceptive Affection is Strategically Expressed Under Relational Threat—But Not Towards Partners with Low Mate Value

Caton

Horan

2023

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

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Individuals sometimes express affection that they do not feel. This describes deceptive affectionate messages and occurs when communicators express affectionate messages that are not consistent with their internal feelings of affection in the moment. They are commonly expressed in romantic relationships (about 3 times per week) and are argued to function as relational maintenance and retention. The present work ( N = 1993) demonstrated that deceptive affectionate messages are the behavioral output of an evolved psychological system that strategically operates to maintain significant pair bonds (i.e., high mate value partners) but not non-significant pair bonds (i.e., low mate value partners). This system is uniquely and nonrandomly designed to increasingly generate deceptive affectionate messages when the individual’s highly valued partnership is perceived to be under relational threat and decreasingly deploy deceptive affectionate messages when the highly valued partnership is not under threat, but the system does not apply this relational strategy in low-valued partnerships. This supports evolutionary psychological reasoning that affectionate communication should be predicated on a cost–benefit ratio, such that deceptive affectionate messages are expressed to high value mates because the substantial costs of losing a highly valued partner outweigh the smaller risks of enacting them (e.g., discovered deception, temporary relational conflict). By establishing that deceptive affection is predicated on a cost–benefit ratio, the present work better solidifies deceptive affection, and affection exchange theory more broadly, in the human evolutionary sciences.

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Angry Hugs and Withheld Love: An Overview of Deceptive Affection

Cited by 2 publications

References 39 publications

Deceptive Affectionate Messages: Mate Retention Deployed Under the Threat of Partner Infidelity

Deceptive Affectionate Messages: Mate Retention Deployed Under the Threat of Partner Infidelity

Deceptive Affection is Strategically Expressed Under Relational Threat—But Not Towards Partners with Low Mate Value

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