315. What effects do heuristics have on relationships?
What are the implications for relationships of the
various decision heuristics found in social psychology?
According to the ‘availability heuristic’, what
carries an emotional load, in threat or opportunity, for example, gets more
attention (is more ‘available’) than emotionally less pronounced but often
equally or more important issues. Concerning the stability of relationships, that
can go in both directions. A relationship can depend on direct and strong
emotions of love, attention, intimacy, tenderness, etc. But it can also fall
apart in ravages of anger, jealousy, frustration, or spite. Quieter virtues of
attention, intimacy, patience, tolerance, and empathy may better serve relationships
but are often overruled.
The heuristic of ‘representativess’ entails overhasty
generalisations, raising incidents to lawlike regularities. ‘You always with
your …..’ That seems mostly detrimental for the stability of relationships. One
should learn to ‘count to ten’.
The heuristic of ‘loss aversion’ yields more extreme
actions to prevent a loss than to achieve a gain. That is stabilizing, since
relationships often break when one party sees a gain in getting out while the
other sees that as a loss and wants him/her to stay. The heuristic would mean
that the first demurs for fear of the second’s wrath and radical action. That
is loyalty, though not an eager one.
According to the heuristic of ‘anchoring and
adjustment’, one stays with given initial conditions, no matter how dysfunctional
or inappropriate those may be, to engage only in marginal improvements, while
it would have been better to make a clean break for something very different. That
will clearly stabilize a non-ideal relationship.
According to the heuristic of ‘escalation of
commitment’ one sticks to a commitment in spite of losses because otherwise
those losses would ‘have been in vain’. That is clearly stabilizing.
In ‘cognitive dissonance’, after a choice is made one pays
attention only to positive evidence that confirms the choice. That is also
clearly stabilizing.
In sum, the heuristics are mostly stabilizing. One
wonders whether that may not be coincidental. Might this have developed in
evolution, as an instinct that favours the survival of relationships, and
especially of the offspring?
Earlier in this blog I offered the hypothesis (it is
no more than that) that the heuristics that now are irrational may have made
sense in a far past, in evolution, for the sake of survival. Here is another
argument for that.
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