Love Lost in Translation: Avoidant Individuals Inaccurately Perceive Their Partners’ Positive Emotions During Love Conversations

Abstract

Empathic accuracy—the ability to decipher others’ thoughts and feelings—promotes relationship satisfaction. Those high in attachment avoidance tend to be less empathically accurate; however, past research has been limited to relatively negative or neutral contexts. We extend work on attachment and empathic accuracy to the positive context of love. To do so, we combined data from three dyadic studies (N = 303 dyads) in which couple members shared a time of love and rated each other’s positive emotions. Using the Truth and Bias Model of Judgment, we found that individuals higher (vs. lower) in attachment avoidance were less accurate in inferring their partners’ positive emotions during the conversation, but did not systematically over- or under-perceive their partners’ positive emotions. Our results suggest that avoidant individuals may be less sensitive to positive cues in their relationships, potentially reducing relational intimacy.