In a recent study published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, researchers explored the dynamics of how couples perceive each other’s personalities and how these perceptions influence relationship satisfaction. A significant discovery from the study is that individuals who perceive themselves as being viewed more positively by their partners than they actually are tend to have partners who report lower levels of satisfaction.
Relationship satisfaction is a vital indicator of the health and stability of romantic partnerships, significantly impacting both individuals’ psychological well-being. Previous research has established that personality traits like agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability are critical to relationship harmony.
However, how partners perceive each other and their awareness of each other’s perceptions — referred to as metaperceptions — might have important effects relationship quality. The researchers set out to investigate this.
“I am interested in couple satisfaction and its antecedents, as individuals’ wellbeing strictly depends on their close relationships,” said study author Camilla Matera, a professor of social psychology at the University of Florence.
The study included 236 heterosexual couples in Italy, with participants ranging in age from 18 to 76, though the majority were young adults, with over three-quarters aged between 18 and 39. Relationship durations varied: a small fraction (5.9%) had been together for less than a year, about two-thirds had been in relationships lasting between one and nine years, and a quarter had been together for ten years or more.
Each participant in the study completed a series of assessments aimed at capturing their self-perceived personality traits as well as their perceptions of their partner’s personality. The Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) was used for this purpose, which measures the Big Five personality dimensions: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experiences.
To deepen the analysis, participants also reported how they believed their partner perceived them. This involved responding to the same TIPI items but from the perspective of how they thought their partner would rate them. This approach allowed the researchers to create congruence scores between these metaperceptions and both the partner’s actual perceptions and the participants’ own self-ratings. These scores were then analyzed to explore their relationship with reported relationship satisfaction.
The researchers found that individuals who perceived themselves as being seen more positively by their partners than they actually are tended to have partners who were less satisfied with the relationship. In other words, if someone believed they were seen as more agreeable, conscientious, or emotionally stable than their partner actually perceived them to be, their partner tended to report lower satisfaction with the relationship.
The findings support the notion that when individuals believe they are viewed more positively by their partners than they actually are, it can have detrimental effects on relationship satisfaction. This mismatch in perceptions may lead to a lack of motivation to change or improve behaviors.
Conversely, if individuals believe their partners view them more negatively than they actually do, they might be more inclined to engage in self-regulation strategies to meet their partner’s needs, ultimately leading to higher satisfaction levels in the relationship.
On the other hand, when individuals believed their partners viewed them as more agreeable than they viewed themselves, both they and their partners reported higher relationship satisfaction. Being viewed as more trusting and helpful than we view ourselves could provide comfort and reassurance about our own value, leading to positive outcomes in the relationship.
Interestingly, men (but not women) who believed their partners saw them as more imaginative and spontaneous than they saw themselves were more likely to have partners who reported higher relationship satisfaction.
“Couples’ relationships and the factors affecting them are more complex than it seems,” Matera told PsyPost. “The way in which we believe our partner sees us does not necessarily reflect the way in which he/she really views us; nevertheless, this belief has a relevant role in making us (and also our partner) happy and satisfied. Everyone should reflect about the complexity of perceptions and relationships.”
Contrary to their expectations, the researchers found that participants who thought their partners saw them as more extraverted than they saw themselves were more likely to have partners who reported lower satisfaction in the relationship.
“The role of extraversion was quite surprising: thinking to be viewed by one’s partner as more extraverted than one saw her/himself was associated with lower relationship satisfaction reported by the partner, which suggests that extraversion might represent a negative rather than positive trait within the couple,” Matera said.
This unexpected result may be attributed to the potentially ambivalent role that extraversion plays within a relationship. Being overly extroverted might be perceived negatively, potentially as being inconsiderate or overly frivolous. If individuals act more extroverted to align with their partner’s perceived view, this behavior could be seen as insincere or deceptive, negatively impacting relationship satisfaction.
These findings have implications for therapeutic practices. Understanding the dynamics of how partners perceive each other can guide interventions aimed at improving relationship satisfaction. Therapists might focus on helping couples develop a more accurate and shared understanding of each other’s perceptions, potentially transforming the way they interact and perceive mutual satisfaction within their relationship.
“Health professionals who work on couple satisfaction should not consider only the way in which the individuals see themselves or their partner, but also the way in which they think their partner sees them, namely their metaperceptions,” Matera noted.
For future directions, it would be insightful to explore the psychological mechanisms that mediate the relationship between personality perceptions and relationship satisfaction. Investigating factors such as self-esteem, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence could shed light on why and how misalignments in personality perceptions impact relationship satisfaction.
Additionally, longitudinal studies could help determine the causal relationships between these variables over time, providing clearer insights into how personality perceptions evolve and affect relationships in the long run.
“I would like to examine the role and power of metaperceptions in different kinds of relationships, considering also other kinds of unions,” Matera said.
The study, “How does my partner see me? Metaperceptions of personality and couple satisfaction,” was authored by Camilla Matera and Elena Pirani.