Study 3 - Relationship Maintenance and Goal Shifting

Next, we tested our predictions in the relationship domain, where maintenance goals are consistently most prevalent (Ecker et al., 2022). Participants reported aspects they wanted to maintain in their romantic relationships, then viewed comparisons of better or worse romantic couples (social comparisons) or better or worse versions of their own relationship (self-comparisons). We predicted and preregistered (https://aspredicted.org/JQN_LZT) that the upward (vs. downward) self-comparisons would boost the motivation to maintain the current state of the relationship more than upward (vs. downward) other-comparisons. Crucially, we also measured goal shifting—whether participants switched from wanting to maintain to wanting to improve their relationship—to test an alternative explanation for our predicted effects. Specifically, decreased maintenance motivation after upward social comparisons or downward self-comparisons might reflect participants shifting to progress goals rather than simply reduced motivation to maintain. This measure allowed us to test whether goal shifting, alongside appreciation, mediated comparison effects on maintenance motivation.