Seeing virtues in faults: Negativity and the transformation of interpersonal narratives in close relationships.

1993/10/01 by Susan Murray, John G. Holmes · 283 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Cultural Differences and Values #Interpersonal communication #Interpersonal interaction #Interpersonal relationship #Media Influence and Health #Narrative #Negativity effect #Psychology #Social psychology

paper · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.65.4.707

published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65(4), 707-722 (American Psychological Association)

openalex publication_date 1993/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11

Abstract

It is proposed that individuals develop story-like representations of their romantic partners that quell feelings of doubt engendered by their partners' faults. In Study 1, dating individuals were induced to depict their partners as rarely initiating disagreements over joint interests. Such conflict avoidance was then turned into a fault. In scaled questionnaires and open-ended narratives, low-conflict individuals then constructed images of conflict-engaging partners. These results suggest that storytelling depends on considerable flexibility in construal as low-conflict Ss possessed little evidence of conflict in their relationships

Citations

• Subjective Construal, Social Inference, and Human Misunderstanding
• Compensatory self-inflation: A response to the threat to self-regard of public failure.
• The case for motivated reasoning.

Cited by

• Perceived superiority in close relationships: Why it exists and persists.
• The Quest for Conviction: Motivated Cognition in Romantic Relationships
• Self-enhancement [wikipedia]