ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 16, 1996 TAG: 9604160058
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHERINE KEEFE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Here's a twist.
Too much understanding could create relationship problems, says William Ickes, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, Arlington.
Ickes is an expert in evaluating empathic accuracy - the ability to correctly infer what another person is thinking or feeling. He has studied empathic accuracy for the past 10 years and has discovered an arsenal of darts to throw at conventional relationship wisdom.
Much of these insights will be revealed in ``Empathic Accuracy'' (Guilford Press, New York), due in January. Ickes edited the book, which compiles his own and others' research findings.
Some surprises: There's evidence that women and men have equal empathic accuracy. And the longer people are together, the less accurate they may become at reading one another.
``The big take-home message of my research is that mutual understanding is not the panacea that it's widely regarded to be,'' Ickes says.
``What we have to do is navigate the waters of knowing what you should know about another person and knowing what to leave alone. There are danger zones we have to steer clear of if we're working from the assumption that people want to keep their relationships together.''
Hmmmmm.
``Intimacy, thy name is ignorance'' may become the new slogan - especially if couples rely heavily on each other.
Here's what Ickes discovered in a test of 82 college-age dating couples who considered themselves happy in their established relationships.
Together, the couples were shown slides. They were told the pictures were of other undergraduates on the campus available for dating relationships.
The slides were actually neither. One group was a compilation of exceptionally good-looking models, clipped from various publications. The control group was a selection of ``below-average-looking'' yearbook photos chosen by undergraduates not involved in the research.
Couples sat together and were asked to call out two rating numbers between 1 and 10. Men rated women's photos, and women evaluated the men.
The first rating gauged how attractive the participant found the person in the photo, and the other defined the sexual appeal of the pictured person.
The couples then split up and were shown videotapes of their own rating session. They were told to stop the tape at points where they remembered having a particular thought or feeling. They were asked to write down that thought or feeling.
Couples then watched the tapes together. Tapes were stopped at the marked segments, and participants were asked to write down what they believed their partner was thinking or feeling.
The couples who rated the best-looking photos were remarkably off in their empathic accuracy, possibly a subconscious relationship-preservation device. In other words, they were motivated to misread their partner's thoughts and feelings to preserve the romance.
For instance, if a man rated a woman's photo a 10 for both appearance and sex appeal and noted his thoughts as ``Wow, what a babe,'' his partner's inference of his thoughts might have been: ``Those flashy bleached blondes aren't his type, but she's supposed to be gorgeous so he's rating her high.''
Partners were strikingly inaccurate in three situations: when both partners thought their relationship was threatened by highly attractive alternatives (the babes and hunks in the photos); when partners perceived their relationship to be one they were highly dependent on; and when their relationship was perceived as potentially unstable.
``Correct understanding between couples is not always a desirable thing,'' Ickes says.
In a four-month follow-up, nearly one-quarter of the couples had broken up. But all of the couples who had displayed motivated innaccuracy in reading each other were still together.
``Looking the other way and turning a blind eye might keep relationships stable,'' Ickes says.
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