Relationship regulation in the face of eye candy: a motivated cognition framework for understanding responses to attractive alternatives

•People resist the temptation of attractive relationship alternatives.•Resistance strategies include avoidance, diverted attention and biased judgments.•Relationship motives increase the use of resistance strategies.•Executive control resources influence the use of resistance strategies.•Automatic activation of strategies is valuable in resource-depleted situations.

The ability to maintain a satisfying and stable romantic relationship may promote health and well-being, yet, the stability of an ongoing relationship may sometimes be challenged by the availability of attractive alternative partners. We review recent findings demonstrating that people — deliberatively and automatically — display a number of strategies that help them protect their current relationship from attractive alternatives. For example, romantically involved individuals typically tend to derogate the physical attractiveness of potential alternative partners. We review different theoretical perspectives that explain why this occurs, and discuss possible mechanisms pertaining to how this occurs, focusing in particular on the independent and possibly interactive roles of motivation and self-regulatory capacity.