SEEING VIRTUES IN FAULTS - NEGATIVITY AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF INTERPERSONAL NARRATIVES IN CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS

It is proposed that individuals develop story-like representations of their romantic partners that quell feelings of doubt engendered by the ir partners' faults. In Study 1, dating individuals were induced to de pict their partners as rarely initiating disagreements over joint inte rests. Such conflict avoidance was then turned into a fault. In scaled questionnaires and open-ended narratives, low-conflict individuals th en constructed images of conflict-engaging partners. These results sug gest that storytelling depends on considerable flexibility in construa l as low-conflict Ss possessed little evidence of conflict in their re lationships. Study 2 further examined the construal processes underlyi ng people's ability to transform the meaning of negativity in their st ories (e.g., seeing virtues in faults). Paradoxically, positive repres entations of a partner may exist-not in spite of a partner's faults-bu t because of these imperfections.