Kindness, a problem when choosing a partner

Counterintuitively, kindness can have negative consequences.

Choosing a partner is one of the most frequently made decisions, the one to which we seem to attach the most importance and one of the ones that can have the most consequences.

However, true compatibility is hard to find, and some might say that many couples seem to have originated from the wrong decision. So, if the choice of partner is so important, why do these choices so often go wrong?

Agreeableness seems to be a stumbling block when it comes to choosing a mate

Most of the psychological studies on this subject take as variables fixed characteristics, such as level of wealth, objective data on physique, etc. However, we must also take into account variables that are present on the ground and that only exist in the personal relationship we have with others. Can there be something in the way we relate to each other that influences us when establishing romantic relationships? We already have studies that point in that direction.

Research

A research team at the University of Toronto has concluded that one of the explanations for an unlucky choice of partner could be, in a nutshell, this: we are too nice..

Rejecting someone poses a difficulty that we are not always willing to overcome, and empathy (or friendliness, or kindness, or politeness) can make us very open to the possibility of dating all kinds of people... even those who 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 others and to be friendly with others (or, looked at another way, to avoid conflict), the team conducted an experiment to observe how this predisposition to empathy affected the choice of a partner. To do this, they invited several men and women as experimental subjects, all of whom were single and interested in dating. Each of them, individually, was 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/she had chosen: this was a set of data among which there are characteristics that the person has previously indicated as excluding, i.e., eliminating the person who has these qualities as a possible partner.

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

The importance of looking good

However, from this point on, the experiment the experiment bifurcated into two variants. Some people were told that their potential better half was right there in the lab, in an adjoining room. Another group of participants was 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, feeling that personal proximity with a person who, at least on paper, did not meet the characteristics they were looking for.

Were the results different in the two groups?

Clearly different. In the group of those who only had to imagine the proximity of the other person, only 17% of the participants said they wanted to be close to the other person. 17% of the participants said they wanted to see themselves with the other person..

On the other hand, in the group of those who believed they were close to the other person, more than a third agreed that they wanted to see the other person.. Moreover, when asked what moved them to make this decision, the scientists found a combination of self-interest and a spirit of generosity. Concern for the other person's feelings clearly played a role, at the expense of a predisposition to reject potential partners.

However, it is not clear that this tendency has to be a source of unhappiness. Of course, it can be if empathy masks important incompatibilities that are revealed as the relationship progresses, until it reaches a point where these problems become more important 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 make empathy and emotional ties gradually strengthen. As in many other things, time seems to be a decisive factor when it comes to evaluating a personal relationship..