Ithaca (dapd). Anyone who has a specific objective and this is supported by his partner, not necessarily faster achieved this objective: A well-meaning partners may even exactly the opposite effect and reduce the motivation, could now prove US researchers. Behind apparently the tendency to reduce’s own efforts, if someone else with responsible – a phenomenon that psychologists refer to as «self-regulatory outsourcing». The results of Duke University in Durham and Eli Finkel from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois by Grainne Fitzsimons question the common view therefore, that the support of a partner has only positive effects. They tell about their work in the journal «Psychological science» (doi: 10.1177 / 0956797610397955).

For their investigation, Fitzsimons and Finkel had conducted surveys on the Internet. The appropriate participants for this were they recruited through a company that collects records and provides. For the first survey, they chose 56 women. You have chosen female subjects, because with them health and fitness – the focus of the first test – taking usually more important than for men, the scientists explain.

In the test part of the subjects should remember a concrete example, how your partner had supported they achieve their sporting goals, while the rest served as a control group and should think of something else. Then, the participants were asked to indicate how much they wanted to train in the following week. There was a distinct difference between the two groups, the evaluation showed the psychologists: the subjects which themselves had initiated the support of its partner in the memory, tended to reduce their own efforts – they were much less sporting activities for the following week as the participants from the control group.

The effect is limited but not sporting ambition, not women, showed a second experiment. Therein, 74 female and male students should solve a puzzle before they were allowed to make a work that was important for their advancement at the University. Those who had believed that their partners specifically would help them in this work, have more time with the puzzle, so that less time for the actual task remained them.

These results now mean that loving or helpful partner does not help us in achieving tasks? “Yes and no”, says Fitzsimons. «If it, goes like in our study to a single specific target, the effect can be negative.» But there are also other examples. So some subjects having reacted in the first test also positive on the helpfulness of their partners, such as with the statement: «I would enter never this gym when my husband not to children would watch.»