Those consumed—or burned—by love may find it no surprise that LAS psychologists say romance is even harder to understand than previously assumed.
If you want to know where your relationship is headed, you might need more than a heart-to-heart conversation, according to a recent study. While someone’s mouth might say, “I’m smitten,” her body might be saying, “I’m smothered.”
Sounds confusing? No one said love is simple. In short, researchers recorded what people said about themselves and their relationships and compared it to observations of facial gestures, heart rates, and sweat when they talked to their partner. A person’s words and body signals were not always in tune.
The LAS study was one of the first to evaluate relationships by simultaneously examining a couples’ self-assessment with equally telling body observations. For example, relationship researchers have long known that when someone’s heart rate and sweat increases around his partner, it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s setting his soul on fire. It could mean that he’s distressed.
“Both heart rate and skin conductance (sweat) have been linked to a host of important outcomes in interpersonal relationships, including the likelihood of divorce,” says psychology professor Glenn Roisman.
So they hooked up the couples to bioamplifiers, watched their faces for grins and scowls, and asked them to talk about a point of disagreement in the relationship. Then the couples talked about something they agreed upon. Analysis of the results showed that how people describe their own personalities does predict how they described their own relationship, but it does not predict how their bodies responded when interacting with their partner.
“Romantic relationships are complex and multifaceted,” says Ashley Holland, a doctoral student in developmental psychology who led the research. “And therefore, measuring the quality of romantic relationships should probably include a variety of approaches in order to get a more nuanced feel of how the relationship is functioning.”
