The question usually gets asked as though sacrifice were one thing, with the answer somewhere between noble and corrosive. Eighty dating couples went through a three-part study: discussing a sacrifice in the lab, logging their daily sacrifices for a fortnight, and answering again three months later. What the researchers watched was not how much people gave up, but why. Does the reason change the outcome?
The motive decided everything. Couples discussing a sacrifice made for , to bring something good about, reported better , and outside observers rated them the same way. Sacrifice made for , to head off conflict or guilt, went with poorer quality. The split along the same line, and three months later the two motives still predicted gains and losses respectively.
Sacrifice in a relationship gets discussed as a single act with a single moral weight. Approach-avoidance motivational theory says otherwise. What matters is whether you are moving toward something desirable or away from something unpleasant, and the two feel quite different from the inside.
Eighty dating couples went through three parts. They discussed a sacrifice in the laboratory, logged their daily sacrifices for 14 days, and answered a follow-up survey three months later. Outside observers also coded the laboratory discussions, which keeps the result from resting on self-report alone.
Discussing a sacrifice made for approach goals went with greater relationship quality, and discussing one made for avoidance goals went with poorer quality. The observers saw the same split. In the daily diaries, approach days lifted relationship quality for both partners, while avoidance days lowered it for the giver. Positive and negative emotions respectively mediated those effects.
Three months on, the motives still predicted the direction of change, as reported by both partners. The authors’ summary is the useful line: sacrifice in itself neither helps nor harms, and the goal a person pursues while giving up their own interests shapes the bond. What the design cannot do is assign a motive. People brought their own, which leaves the causal direction open across eighty couples.
wat. Giving something up to create something good lifted both partners. Giving the same thing up to avoid a row cost the giver.
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It replaces a bad question with a better one. Not whether to sacrifice for a partner, which everybody does, but whether the thing you are moving toward is a good outcome or merely the absence of a bad one.
How do we know?
Impett and colleagues followed 80 dating couples through a laboratory discussion, 14 days of daily reports and a three-month follow-up, with outside observers coding the discussions.
What is still unknown
Eighty dating couples, with motives reported by the people holding them and no way to assign anyone a goal. So this is a pattern across three months rather than a proven cause.
Learn something?
Where to next
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