ABSTRACT
Shakespeare's claim that “love is blind” is now a cultural truism, and this belief may well have abounded in his day. Although we hesitate to dispute Shakespeare, we are intrigued by how romantic partners sometimes exhibit remarkable sensitivity to negative as well as positive behaviors and emotions that occur in the context of their relationships. Moreover, starry-eyed as partners can be, romantic attraction is frequently associated with intensive information-seeking efforts and vigilance: Uncertainties about aspects of their partners and their relationships often seem to prompt people to undertake a variety of overt, surreptitious, and even underhanded actions. In this chapter, we examine the direct and indirect strategies individuals might adopt to obtain answers to their questions, and discuss the implications of their informational search for their self-evaluations and feelings about their relationships. We consider how individuals' concerns are likely to change as their relationships progress, and analyze factors that influence people's vigilance for information about their partners and themselves. We conclude that lovers may be blind, but not always in the traditional sense of being motivated to ignore each other's faults and construct utopian views of their relationships. A key issue raised by our analysis is whether individuals who are in love try to discover the “truth” about their partners or their relationships. There is good reason to suppose that people sometimes ignore information that is inconsistent with their beliefs and hopes. Swann (1983) argued that people orchestrate their social environments to confirm or validate what they already believe to be true: They avoid information that is inconsistent with previous knowledge, and reject such information when it is thrust upon them. One implication of Swann's research is that romantic partners may conduct a biased search for social information. Theory and research on positive illusions also suggests that romantic partners may ignore or discount information that challenges their preferences (e.g., Kunda, 1990; Murray & Holmes, 1993, chap. 4, this volume; Taylor, 1989).
