An examination of devaluation of alternatives beyond physical attractiveness

Individuals in romantic relationships often encounter threats to the longevity of their current romantic relationship, such as noticing attractive alternative partners. To protect against such threats, committed individuals engage in a devaluation process in which they evaluate physically attractive individuals as less attractive than objectively warranted. The present study examines how individuals in romantic relationships evaluate attractive alternatives that possess desirable qualities beyond just physical attractiveness. One hundred and fifty-six participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and my university’s research participation pool for this study. Participants completed the commitment subscale of the Investment Model Scale (Rusbult et al., 1998) to measure commitment and evaluated fake dating profiles that independently varied in physical attractiveness, intelligence, status, and friendliness. Participants rated targets in accordance with their objective coding, creating a set of validated dating profiles. Surprisingly, this study also found that highly committed individuals devalued low status alternatives; however, no other devaluation effects were found. Future research can use these profiles to further study how individuals rate strangers