Perceiving the world as a fundamentally good or enticing place is associated with positive outcomes in romantic relationships, according to a new study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The study found that individuals who believe the world is generally good or full of enticing opportunities tend to report higher relationship satisfaction, greater responsiveness to their partners, and inspire similar feelings in their partners. These positive beliefs appear to motivate individuals to pursue rewarding relationship goals, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of relationship satisfaction and responsiveness.
The new study is rooted in the concept of primal world beliefs, which are individuals’ fundamental perceptions of the world’s nature—whether it is good or bad, safe or dangerous, or interesting and worth exploring. These beliefs serve as a lens through which people interpret their experiences and guide their actions and goals.
Previous research has linked positive world beliefs to better interpersonal relationships, higher trust, and lower loneliness, suggesting that such beliefs may influence well-being. However, the specific role of these beliefs in romantic relationships, which are crucial for emotional and psychological health, remained underexplored.
The researchers were particularly interested in how world beliefs might shape key aspects of romantic relationships, such as relationship satisfaction and mutual responsiveness. Responsiveness—the ability to understand, validate, and care for a partner—is a cornerstone of successful relationships. They hypothesized that individuals with positive world beliefs might view their relationships as rewarding and worthwhile, motivating them to pursue goals that deepen intimacy and connection.
“I am interested in the factors that impact how people relate to others, and whether or not they maintain social connections that promote their well-being. Many of those factors involve beliefs, including beliefs about oneself, other people, and relationships,” said study author Edward Lemay, a professor and director of the Interpersonal Relationships Lab at the University of Maryland.
“However, little is known regarding the role of world beliefs, despite the fact that some theories suggest that world beliefs are important for motivation and behavior generally and for intimate relationships specifically. After Jeremy Clifton and colleagues published their research on primal world beliefs, I became excited about the idea of applying this research to close relationships and testing whether these beliefs impact the quality of romantic relationships.”
The study included 236 romantic couples who participated in a combination of surveys, daily diary entries, and follow-up assessments over one year. Participants were recruited through various channels, such as online advertisements, local postings, and emails. The sample included couples in diverse relationship stages—dating, engaged, or married—and varied in age, with an average relationship length of nine years.
Both partners in each couple completed an initial survey, which measured their primal world beliefs using a detailed questionnaire that assessed dimensions like whether they perceived the world as good, safe, or enticing. The survey also included measures of relationship satisfaction, communal motivation (the desire to care for their partner’s needs), and responsiveness.
To capture everyday relationship experiences, participants completed daily diary entries for two weeks. These entries included questions about their relationship satisfaction, responsiveness to their partner, and perceptions of their partner’s responsiveness. The researchers averaged these daily reports to assess general trends. Additionally, participants nominated friends who knew both members of the couple to provide external assessments of responsiveness, adding a third-party perspective.
A follow-up survey was conducted one year later to assess changes in relationship satisfaction, communal motivation, and responsiveness. This longitudinal approach allowed the researchers to explore the stability of primal world beliefs and their potential long-term associations with relationship outcomes.
The researchers found strong associations between positive world beliefs and various indicators of relationship quality. Individuals who viewed the world as good or enticing tended to report higher daily relationship satisfaction and greater responsiveness to their partners. Their partners also reported feeling more satisfied and perceived them as more responsive. These findings were corroborated by friends’ assessments, adding external validation to the self-reported data.
One of the key insights was the role of approach and avoidance goals in mediating these associations. People with positive world beliefs were more likely to adopt approach goals in their relationships. These approach goals were strongly linked to higher satisfaction and mutual responsiveness for both partners. In contrast, avoidance goals—focused on preventing conflict or avoiding rejection—were less common among those with positive world beliefs and were associated with lower satisfaction and responsiveness.
“A key takeaway is that positive world beliefs (specifically, seeing the world as generally good and seeing the world as enticing) promote mutually caring and satisfying romantic relationships,” Lemay told PsyPost. “These beliefs have this effect because they shape the goals people pursue in their relationships. When people see the world as good and enticing, they adopt ‘approach goals,’ which are goals to obtain positive outcomes in the relationship, such as having fun with one’s partner, having meaningful experiences with one’s partner, and improving the bonding and intimacy in the relationship.”
“When people pursue these approach goals, it promotes more caring and satisfying relationships for themselves and their partners. In other words, when people see the world as a good place, or as a place that is interesting and worth exploring, it may cause them to see more opportunities for improving their relationships, and to see improving their relationships as worthwhile.”
The one-year follow-up provided additional insights. Participants with positive world beliefs reported greater communal motivation—a willingness to prioritize their partner’s needs—and higher relationship satisfaction over time. Their partners also perceived them as more responsive a year later, suggesting that these associations were not merely short-term effects but reflected enduring patterns in their relationships.
Moreover, the study highlighted the stability of primal world beliefs. Positive beliefs about the world’s goodness and enticing nature were consistent over the year, likely reinforced by the individuals’ satisfying and mutually responsive relationships. This suggests that such beliefs and relationship dynamics may create a feedback loop, where positive beliefs encourage behaviors that enhance relationships, which in turn validate and sustain those beliefs.
Interestingly, the belief that the world is safe or dangerous did not significantly predict relationship outcomes. This was surprising, as the researchers had hypothesized that feeling safe would reduce avoidance goals and promote better relationship quality. They speculated that individuals who view the world as dangerous might either disengage from avoidance strategies or acclimate to negative experiences, diluting the impact of this belief on their relationship dynamics.
The study also revealed mixed effects for the belief that the world is alive—perceived as interactive and dependent on one’s actions. While this belief was associated with both approach and avoidance goals, the opposing effects appeared to cancel each other out, resulting in no clear overall impact on relationship satisfaction or responsiveness.
“The Clifton et al. (2019) measure of primal world beliefs breaks up world beliefs into three distinct beliefs – safe (versus dangerous), enticing (versus dull), and alive (versus mechanistic),” Lemay explained. “We found that enticing world beliefs (i.e., beliefs that the world is interesting, fascinating, and worth exploring) predicted relationship quality. To our surprise, we did not find that seeing the world as safe predicted relationship quality.
“A number of theoretical frameworks suggest that feeling safe and secure in one’s relationship (i.e., trusting one’s partner) is important for relationship quality, whereas being hypervigilant for threats tends to diminish relationship quality because it makes people trust their partners less. So we had expected that safe world belief would be an important contributor to relationship quality.”
“In hindsight, it might be the case that safe world beliefs do not strongly predict relationship quality because there is both a ‘push’ and a ‘pull’ with regard to how these beliefs impact relationships,” Lemay continued. “On the one hand, when people see the world as safe, this might cause them to have more trust in their partners, which can improve relationship quality. On the other hand, when people see the world as safe, they may be less dependent on their partners for safety and protection from a subjectively dangerous world (compared to people who see the world as dangerous), which could reduce closeness.”
The findings underscore the potential of primal world beliefs to shape romantic relationships. But as with all research, there are limitations. The sample primarily consisted of individuals from the United States, a culture characterized by high relational mobility and a tendency toward approach motivations. The findings may differ in cultures with lower relational mobility or greater emphasis on avoidance motivations. Additionally, the study cannot establish causation.
“We used daily surveys and longitudinal methods over a year to test our hypotheses,” Lemay noted. “These methods have important strengths, such as high ecological validity (i.e., the methods capture people’s experiences in their day-to-day lives) and examining change over a relatively long period of time. However, an important limitation is that they do not tell us anything about causation. Researchers are working on developing experimental manipulations of world beliefs, which would permit testing causal effects of world beliefs on interpersonal relationships.”
Future research could address these gaps by exploring the effects of primal world beliefs in diverse cultural settings, among same-sex couples, and in relationships with differing dynamics. Additionally, the researchers are interested in the reciprocal relationship between world beliefs and interpersonal relationships—how these two facets influence each other over time, potentially forming a self-reinforcing cycle of well-being.
“Over the long term, I would like to develop an understanding of how our experiences in the broader world impact our interpersonal relationships and vice-versa, how our interpersonal relationships impact our experiences of the broader world,” Lemay said. “People’s general world beliefs are one piece of that picture.”
“You can take the Primals World Belief survey at Jeremy Clifton’s website. The site will generate a report explaining how you compare to others who have taken the scale. Here is the address: https://myprimals.com/discover-your-primals/.”
The study, “World Beliefs Predict the Maintenance of Satisfying Communal Relationships: The Role of Approach and Avoidance Goals,” was authored by Edward P. Lemay Jr., Jennifer N. Cutri, Ronald Or, and Alexander Davis.
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