Going my way? The benefits of travelling in the same direction

a r t i c l e i n f o Couples' marital satisfaction can depend on whether they commute to work in the same or different directions. Two surveys, conducted in the United States and Hong Kong, showed that partners' satisfaction with their relationship was greater when they traveled to work in the same direction than when they traveled in different directions. This was true regardless of whether the partners left for work at the same or different times. A controlled laboratory study eliminated alternative interpretations of the survey findings, showing that even randomly paired participants reported greater attraction to one another when they walked to an experimental task in the same direction rather than in different directions. " Love does not consist in gazing at each other but looking in the same direction together. " –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Introduction Suppose a newlywed couple is choosing their apartment. One apartment is midway between their work places. A second is directly east of both partners' work places, so they would commute in the same direction but one partner would take longer to get to work than the other. Which apartment should they choose? If they choose the first option, their combined commuting distance would be shorter. Furthermore, they would share the burden of commuting equally. Nevertheless, our research suggests that the second option may be preferable. That is, mere similarity in the direction of commuting to work increases marital satisfaction. What could account for this effect? Although similarity in goals and values has a positive influence on the quality of interpersonal re-, this evidence might seem to be of little relevance to the phenomena we investigated., however, individuals form mental representations whose features include both behavioral dispositions and concepts to which the behavior is metaphorically linked. Thus, physically moving in a particular goal-relevant direction (e.g., commuting to work) might become associated with more general goal-related concepts. Evidence of this association was reported by Natanzon and Ferguson (2012). It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that associations can also be formed between the similarity of goal-directed behavior and the similarity of goals to which the behavior is metaphorically linked. (The use of phrases such as " going our separate ways " to describe in-dividuals' opposing objectives exemplifies this metaphorical association .) That is, physically moving in the same or a different direction in the course of goal-related activity might be a feature …