Are You Satisficing or Maximizing in Your Relationship?

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Imagine you are going to a restaurant for lunch and you see a specials board outside. Their special of the day looks good to you. Do you head in and order it or do you ask to see the rest of the menu to make sure you’ve considered all of your options?

If you are content to order the special, you are likely more of a satisficer. If instead, it is important to you to consider all of your options to ensure sure you make the best choice, you are likely more of a maximizer. Now switch out that special for a romantic partner—taking the first good choice might be considered settling, but could it be that “settling” may not always be such a bad thing?

Settling Versus Maximizing in Dating

Research has shown that these different tendencies—to settle for “good enough” or to make sure you carefully consider all of the possible options—have meaningful effects on our decision-making and overall well-being. In some research, graduating college seniors who scored higher on maximizing tendencies found jobs that paid 20 percent more, on average, than college seniors who were not maximizers.¹ However, they were less satisfied with their jobs and felt more negatively about the job searching process.

When searching for a partner, maximizing may not even get you an objectively better pick. In one study, researchers found that people who tended to maximize searched through more dating profiles and actually selected profiles that were less well-matched with what they said they wanted in a partner, compared to satisficers.² This was especially true when they had more options available to them. Why? Because when we are provided with too much information or too many decisions, it can actually lead to worse decision-making (something the researchers call the “more-means-worse” effect). We start focusing on less important features, making minor distinctions between options, and get pickier overall as we get more fatigued and overwhelmed. In these studies, they had less than a hundred profiles to look at. Imagine what would happen if the maximizers had been given free reign on Tinder.

Once in a relationship, researchers have found that maximizers tend to be less satisfied and invested in their relationships and they are more likely to report they have high quality alternatives to their relationships compared to satisficers.³ Satisfaction, investments, and (low) quality of alternatives are the three critical factors proposed to predict relationship commitment, according to Caryl Rusbult’s Investment Model. And, indeed, people who were higher in maximizing were less committed than those who were not as concerned about making sure they achieved the best possible outcome.

Focusing on Alternatives May Lead to Feeling Worse

Making sure you don’t settle for the first person who passes muster and taking the time to find someone with who you are truly compatible sound like good things, so why are people who focus on making the best possible choice less satisfied with and committed to their relationships? That quality of alternatives seems to be key—people who are highly concerned with making the best possible choice are constantly aware that they may, in fact, not have made the best possible choice. Their concern that there might be something else better out there keeps them focused on better alternatives even after they’ve made a decision. When it comes to relationships, maximizers may wonder whether they did select the right partner or if someone else they dated might have actually been better. This need to have the best then leads to feeling worse, as with the college seniors who got better jobs but felt worse about them.

Not all maximizers are necessarily less satisfied with their relationships, however. A set of evolutionary psychologists found that maximizing males were only less satisfied if their wives were less attractive (something thought to be evolutionarily important for males seeking a mate) and maximizing females were only less satisfied if their husbands had lower incomes (something thought to be evolutionarily important for females seeking a mate).⁴ In other words, maximizers who feel they have maximized may be no less happy than satisficers.

So does this mean you should settle for the next person who shows interest? No. Especially because there is still a lot more research that needs to be done on this topic – there are only a handful of studies on maximizing and satisficing in romantic relationships. But if you think someone has potential and are interested in them, you should consider giving them your full attention while you are dating them and not spend your time wondering if someone better is a swipe away.