Shared Time Scarcity and the Pursuit of Extraordinary Experiences

Psychological Science · 2021 · Volume 32 · Issue 12

Abstract

This work documents a relationship-maintenance strategy that individuals use when they perceive their time with a partner as scarce (vs. abundant): choosing to share extraordinary experiences (i.e., those characterized by uniqueness and superiority; pilot study N = 57). Study 1 first tested this notion in a social media experiment ( N = 35,848 ad impressions on 25,148 adults). Study 2 ( N = 393 adults) suggested that individuals choose extraordinary experiences as a way of sustaining the focal relationship, which leads them to prioritize extraordinariness over other attributes, such as quantity (Study 3: N = 100 adults) and convenience (Study 4: N = 799 adults). Consistent with the relationship-maintenance account, results showed that this prioritization of extraordinary experiences when facing shared time scarcity occurs only when individuals have a strong relationship-maintenance goal (Study 4). Taken together, these studies advance our understanding of the antecedents of experiential choices in close relationships.

Keywords

shared time, shared experiences, close relationships, relationship maintenance, open data, open materials, preregistered

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