Skewed thinking doesn't just make us suspicious about our lovers; some biases have a noble goal—they embellish our perception of a mate. Positive illusions turn up the volume on the traits you love: Everyone agrees that your husband comes from attractive stock, but you insist that he's the best-looking guy in the family. Your wife is no slouch, but you're convinced she's the unheralded star of the office. Faby Gagne, a research consultant and visiting scholar at Wellesley College, found that 95 percent of people think their paramour is above average in appearance, intelligence, warmth, and sense of humor. There's deep wisdom in these sunny views: People who believe they've struck romantic gold are more satisfied with their relationship and more committed to their mate.
Romantic illusions are so critical that they may actually balloon during key decision-making phases of a relationship, such as whether to get married, or when to have children. That's because, says Gagne, biases can buffer us against the angst of dicey deliberations. You might unconsciously offset your ambivalence about becoming a father by focusing on what a great mother your wife will be. I may be terrified to accept a job that keeps me on the road, but at least I know my husband will remain faithful.
When Gagne first investigated biased thinking and decision making, she assumed that tough choices would dampen positive illusions. To her surprise, she found the opposite: People are especially motivated to enhance their lover's stellar qualities at key junctures, while simultaneously becoming more accurate in judgments related to the decision. "When you enter deliberation mode, the goal is to be accurate. This accuracy can be unsettling. To cope with the anxiety, you increase your biased evaluation of a partner. But in a deliberative frame of mind, accuracy and bias do not seem to contaminate one another. So intimates gain the capacity to be accurate because of their positive bias, rather than despite their positive bias," explains Gagne. It sounds paradoxical, but reason and bias readily co-exist in every corridor of our thinking. Illusion alone makes life a dangerous joyride, but unchecked accuracy leads to a seriously depressurized flight.
Why the Wife Is Always The Last to Know
Positive illusions help us marvel at our mates; biased thinking places safe bets on their behavior. But there's a type of mating intelligence that's even more paradoxical. Self-deception softens the conjugally unpalatable and pushes the envelope on what constitutes an intelligent strategy. When it comes to defending a relationship to ourselves, we're like lawyers who routinely manipulate—but outright lie when the need arises.
Sometimes we just give irritating actions a pass: Her rudeness to telephone solicitors has an upside (decisiveness). His tax returns don't add up? OK, he massaged the numbers after one bad year, and he'll surely make up for it in charitable donations. But God help his thieving brother, who took one deduction too many.
Most people who offend us in life will be deemed thoroughly flawed rather than temporarily challenged. This rush to judge a person's disposition, rather than considering the context surrounding their actions, is known as the fundamental attribution error. This bias likely evolved to keep our ancestors from aligning with dangerous individuals, a sort of one-strike-and-you're-out law of character judgment. But for a beloved partner we will make an exception, suspending censure like a president on an executive-pardon binge.
Chronic self-deception is more complicated. Hillary Clinton's admission that she believed Bill's early protestations about Monica engendered a global eye roll. But to some, this quiet acknowledgment of her own casuistry humanized her and made her more sympathetic. She was, after all, declaring her membership in one of the oldest women's leagues: Wives Who Are the Last to Know.
Women can be highly motivated to stay in relationships, and that often means overlooking noxious male behavior, especially if a split jeopardizes children, finances, or status. Turning a blind eye to infidelity is the Faustian pact many a First Lady has made. (Among the myriad reasons women tolerate cheating husbands, a stint in the White House is surely the best payoff.) Here, too, mating intelligence is at work.
All-or-nothing thinking about infidelity (your own or your mate's), divorce, or any act that will destabilize a relationship is often a smart—if unconscious—gambit. Consider the alternative: Uncertainty, distrust, and fractured loyalties make for paranoia, heartache, and paralysis. Miller suggests that one of the very functions of mating intelligence may be to navigate the emotional tipping points at which a decision can be made or a behavior acknowledged. "If you have to settle for one strategy or another, and if in-between strategies just aren't viable, then the emotions that motivate those strategies will also have tipping points." In other words, before we make a move, we are better off if we can avoid tormenting ourselves about the signs of an affair, or equivocating about ditching a spouse. Black-or-white thinking protects us from such protracted agony. It may also make our eventual decision (to leave, to cheat) appear rapid and fickle to a perplexed partner. And it explains why, when the light finally goes on, a betrayed spouse is quickly out the door.
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