The propensity to see the self as better than others also seems to pervade the way people think about themselves as a relationship partner. Research has shown that a majority of people believe that they are above average as a spouse and as a parent (Headey & Wearing, 1988). Given the tendency towards self-enhancement, it is noteworthy that individuals do not only tend to see their relationship partners as more positive than others, but sometimes even tend to see their partner as better than themselves.

For instance, Brown (1986, Experiments 2 and 3) demonstrated that people rate their best friends more favorably and less negatively than most other people. Similarly, Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, and Elliot (1998) found that closely related individuals refrain from self-enhancement. In two experiments, members of relationally distant dyads took more credits for dyadic success than for its failure, whereas close participants did not differ in their attributions for dyadic success or failure.

The inclination to appraise close others in a more positive fashion than other people is also displayed when romantic partners evaluate each other. For instance, Hall and Taylor (1976; see also Taylor & Koivumaki, 1976) found that intimate partners tended to idealize each other and to evaluate their partner more positively than they do themselves. Schütz and Tice (1997) demonstrated that both low and high self-esteem individuals used an indirect form of self-enhancement by describing their romantic partners positively. Further, low self-esteem individuals were more strongly inclined to describe their partner more positively than themselves whereas high self-esteem individuals tended to present themselves as superior to their partners.

According to Murray and Holmes (1993, 1994, 1997), people adhere to have positive, or even idealized perceptions of their romantic partners, and will minimize information that challenges these positive perceptions. For instance, Murray and Holmes (1993) created experimentally a threat to the relationship by turning a partner's positive qualities into potential faults. After that, participants tended to ignore or discount such apparent shortcomings, for instance through accentuation of their partners' positive qualities and through partner-enhancing attributions that minimized the partner's responsibility for this fault.

Especially individuals who are satisfied with their relationship, relative to those in distressed relationships, seem to make partner-enhancing attributions, that is, they are more likely to attribute their intimate partners' positive behaviors to personal qualities, while they tend to see their partners' negative behaviors as situationally caused (e.g., Fincham & Beach, 1988; Fincham, Beach, & Baucom, 1987; Fletcher, Fincham, Cramer, & Heron, 1987; see Bradbury & Fincham, 1990, for a review). Hence people may evaluate their intimate partners as superior to themselves, thus engaging in partner-enhancing rather than in self-enhancing social comparison.

Overall, these studies suggest that in a close relationship people may engage in partner-enhancing social comparisons to achieve and maintain a positive, superior image of their romantic partners. Specifically in areas of low self-relevance, individuals tend to admit being outperformed by their partners (Pilkington, Tesser, & Stephens, 1991). Additionally, the self-evaluation maintenance model (Tesser, 1988; see for an extension to close relationships, Beach & Tesser, 1993, 1995) states that a person's self-evaluation may be bolstered by his or her partner's superiority over oneself, because that person can bask in reflected glory of the partner's success (cf. Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman, & Sloanet, 1976; see also Cialdini & Richardson, 1980; Cialdini, & De Nicholas, 1989; Snyder, Lassegard, & Ford, 1989). As such, partner-enhancement can be considered as an indirect means of self-enhancement (cf. Schütz & Tice, 1997; see also Brown, Collins, & Schmidt, 1988; Cialdini, Finch, & De Nicholas, 1989).

However, it must be noted that when evaluating characteristics high in self-relevance, the reflection process will be discouraged and a process of comparison will be prompted which might be self-enhancing when the partner is outperformed, but which might threaten one's self-evaluation by outstanding accomplishments of the partner (cf. Tesser, 1988; Feather, 1994).

For instance, people show negative emotions when they are outperformed on a dimension in which they want to excel themselves (Tesser & Collins, 1988; Tesser, Millar, & Moore, 1988; Salovey & Rodin, 1984). Feather (1994; see also Smith et al., 1996) showed that comparison with a high achiever on a self-defining dimension might engender feelings of envy, and that individuals may sometimes rejoice at a high achiever's misfortune. Likewise, individuals who are outclassed in an area of high self-relevance by someone whom they are close to, tend to withdraw from an activity with that friend or relative, thus reducing the interpersonal closeness toward that other (Pleban & Tesser, 1981).

In addition, social comparison may play an important role in the way individuals evaluate their close relationships (see Van Yperen & Buunk, 1994, for a review). That is, people in general seem to be inclined to engage in relationship-enhancing social comparison and to see their relationship in superior terms (i.e. perceived relationship superiority). For instance, evidence is accumulating that people tend to appraise the quality of their own relationship (Buunk & Van Yperen, 1989, 1991; Buunk & Van den Eijnden, 1997; Helgeson, 1994; Van Lange & Rusbult, 1995) and the future of their relationship (Baker & Emery, 1993; Buehler, Griffin, & Ross, 1995; Buunk, 1998; Heaton & Albrecht, 1991; Helgeson, 1994; Murray & Holmes, 1997; Schriber, Larwood, & Peterson, 1985; Weinstein, 1980; Wigboldus & Van Lange, 1993) more positively and less negatively than the relationships of others.

For instance, Buunk and Van Yperen (1989, 1991) demonstrated that most individuals felt that their marriage was in terms of inputs and outcomes superior to most other marriages, and Helgeson (1994) found that most people tend to perceive their own relationships as more satisfying than that of others. Van Lange and Rusbult (1995) asked participants to list the positive and negative qualities that spontaneously come to mind when thinking about their own and others' relationships, and found that people hold a greater number of positive beliefs and fewer negative beliefs about their own relationships than about other relationships.

In accordance with Taylor and Brown's (1988, 1994) perspective, there is substantial evidence that such perceptions are positively related to perceived relationship quality, that is, perceiving one's relationship as better than the relationship of most others is related to an enhanced satisfaction with, and stability of one's own relationship. For instance, Buunk and Van den Eijnden (1997) demonstrated that most individuals tend to perceive their own relationship as superior to the relationships of most others or the relationship of the average other.

In addition, Buunk and Van den Eijnden found that the perception of superiority of the relationship over that of others was more pronounced among individuals who were happy in their relationships. In a similar vein, Martz et al. (1998) found positive relations between the tendency to evaluate one's own relationship more favorably than their best friend's relationship on the one hand, and relationship satisfaction and commitment to the relationship on the other hand.

Although the greater part of these findings were correlational, Rusbult and Buunk (1993; see also Rusbult, Drigotas & Verette, 1994) suggested that comparison of the relationship with other relationships may be employed as a means of relationship evaluation, that is, greater perceived relationship superiority may "feed bac" on satisfaction, which in turn may lead to stronger feelings of commitment to the relationship.

According to Rusbult (1980, 1983), relationship satisfaction is one of the key factors in predicting commitment to the relationship, which is the "psychological state that globally represents the experience of dependence on the relationship" (Rusbult & Buunk, 1993, p. 180). Highly committed individuals feel attached to their partners and intend to continue their relationship even in times of adversity, and develop a variety of maintenance mechanisms to sustain a healthy long-term relationship. In line with this argument, Buunk, Collins, Taylor, Van Yperen, and Dakof (1990) found that those who experience high levels of marital satisfaction felt better following comparison of their own marital relationships with other marital relationships than those experiencing low levels of marital dissatisfaction.

The above findings suggest that particularly downward social comparison may play an important role in achieving and maintaining a positive image of the romantic partner and the relationship, and in attaining and maintaining commitment to the relationship. However, even though researchers have become increasingly interested in the role of social cognitive processes in relationships (for reviews, see Clark, Helgeson, Mickelson, & Pataki, 1994; Fletcher & Fincham, 1991; Fletcher & Fitness, 1996), experimental studies on the role of social comparison in the development and maintenance of relationship quality are, as far as we know, virtually non-existent, although studies by Buunk (1996, 1998; also Buunk & Van den Eijnden, 1997) are recent exceptions.

The present research sought to explore whether cognitive downward comparison is a successful strategy for people who face relationship problems to reevaluate their situation and to make them feel relatively good about their own relationship. More specifically, the current thesis addresses the question whether comparison of their own relationship with other relationships, that are qualitatively inferior, might result in a more positive evaluation of the relationship, and a higher commitment to the relationship among individuals who are discontented with their close relationship, than among those contented with the relationship.