What's more important in a relationship: believing you are understood or actually being understood?
Understanding is at the heart of intimate relationships. It is unclear, however, whether understanding—partners’ subjective feeling that they understand each other—or knowledge—partners’ accurate knowledge of each other—is more important for relationship well-being. The present article pits these two types of understanding against each other and investigates their effects on relationship well-being. In a prospective study among 199 newlywed couples, partners’ self-reported and perceived understanding and their knowledge in different domains were assessed. Understanding was independent of knowledge. Self-reported and perceived understanding predicted relationship well-being but neither type of knowledge did. Thus, subjectively feeling that one understands and is understood by one’s partner appears to be more important to relationship well-being than actually knowing and being known by one’s partner.
Source: "Investigating the Role of Two Types of Understanding in Relationship Well-Being: Understanding Is More Important Than Knowledge" from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 35, No. 11, 1512-1527 (2009)
Reminds me of a prior post: we don't usually reward the best people, we reward the most visible. Wow, after the men and punching things post it feels like today is going to be a very philosophical day...
Do we ever really know someone else? This is a pretty fundamental part of how we see the world. Is perception all we have? And if so, how does that affect the choices we make? Heady stuff.
To bring us back down to Earth, I'm a firm believer that people say they want the truth far more often than they actually do. It's almost scripted in people's brains, "Of course I want to know the truth." But our actions speak far louder than our words. A favorite quote of mine:
- If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
-
- Don Marquis
- And what might that tell us about this blog? Hmmmm...
Things you didn't know about lies, liars and detecting lies
Read this if you are kind, strong willed, but can be self-critical
How to make very accurate predictions for how long things will take to accomplish
Parents Don't Know What Their Kid's Talking About 76% of the Time
"House" is right. Patients do lie
You should follow me on Twitter here or subscribe to this blog's feed. If you're a regular reader please support the blog by doing your book and movie shopping at the store. You'll find all my recommendations there. Here are the site's most popular posts of all time.
