ABSTRACT
Once people form their self-views, they work to verify and preserve them.This is the core contention of self-verification theory (Swann, 1983). Thetheory has wide-ranging implications for understanding close relationships. That is, it not only predicts the partners people select, but also how happy they are with those partners, and whether they remain with them or divorce them. What makes the theory interesting is that it challenges the widely accepted notion that relationship quality is optimized when partners entertain and communicate exalted evaluations of one another. Rather, the theory predicts that people prefer partners who validate their negative as well as positive self-views. Moreover, because self-views have the same functional properties regardless of their degree of specificity, the theory applies whether self-views pertain to global qualities (e.g., personal value) or highly specific ones (e.g., athleticism). Furthermore, the theory holds that self-verification is an adaptive process that, paradoxically, promotes health and well-being.
