Who Wants Out When the Going Gets Good? Psychological Investment and Preference for Self-Verifying College Roommates

Abstract The results of a field investigation indicate that people who are highly invested in their self-views (confidently held or personally important) are especially inclined to display a preference for verification of their self-views. Specifically, only those participants who were certain of their self-views or perceived them as important preferred roommates who confirmed their self-views. Such preferences were some-what stronger when the self-views were relatively negative. This is the first demonstration of self-verification in a field setting in which relationship partners were randomly assigned to one another.