Invisible Overtures: Fears of Rejection and the Signal Amplification Bias Jacquie D. Vorauer University of Manitoba Jessica J. Cameron and John G. Holmes University of Waterloo Deanna G. Pearce University of Manitoba Four studies demonstrated that fears of rejection prompt individuals to exhibit a signal amplification bias, whereby they perceive that their overtures communicate more romantic interest to potential partners than is actually the case. The link between rejection anxieties and the bias was evident regardless of whether fears of rejection were assessed in terms of chronic attachment anxiety or were induced by reflection on a previous rejection experience. Mediation analyses suggested that the bias stems in part from an expected-augmenting process, whereby persons with strong fears of rejection incorrectly assume that the recipient of their overtures will take their inhibitions into account when interpreting their behavior. Implications for understanding the link between attachment anxiety and loneliness and for designing social skills interventions are discussed. Considerable research suggests that social bonds increase self- esteem, happiness, physical health, and longevity and that close personal ties generally enhance the quality of people’s lives (see, e.g., Blazer, 1982; DeVellis, DeVellis, Sauter, Harring, & Cohen, 1986; Hartup & Stevens, 1997; Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995). Unfortunately, however, many individuals are dissatisfied with the number and quality of their personal relationships: As many as 94% of people feel lonely at times (West, Kellner, & Moore-West, 1986), and those who are lonely also experience feelings of helplessness and depression (Ernst & Cacioppo, 1999). Such statistics raise the question of how it is that people so often find themselves alone when they would rather be with others. One obvious (albeit painful) reason why relationships can fail to form is that the attraction felt by one party is not shared by the other. However, even in the presence of mutual interest, social bonds frequently fail to develop (Sprecher & Duck, 1994). What, then, are the obstacles that individuals encounter when they seek to initiate a relationship with someone to whom they are attracted? Surprisingly, in view of the fact that the ability to successfully forge social bonds (romantic or otherwise) appears to be key to individuals’ psychological and physical well-being, most research on relationship development has focused on predicting whether individuals will feel attracted to one another in the first place or on already established relationships. The dynamics of relationship initiation have remained relatively unexplored. The few investiga- tions that have examined this issue have focused primarily on documenting the specific behavioral strategies that individuals report using to initiate romantic relationships (e.g., Clark, Shaver, & Abrahams, 1999) or on identifying the types of nonverbal behaviors that people exhibit when interacting with an attractive member of the opposite sex (Simpson, Gangestad, & Nations, 1996). Personality or gender differences in such behaviors have also been considered (Simpson, Gangestad, & Biek, 1993). How- ever, research on attributional processes suggests that the inter- pretations that senders and receivers attach to behavior can be more important to how the interactions unfold than the behaviors per se (Holmes, 1991; Orvis, Kelley, & Butler, 1976). Thus, it seems that an analysis of the social perceptions surrounding rela- tionship initiation attempts could provide important insights into how individuals’ efforts to “make the first move” might go awry. In the present research, we endeavored to take a preliminary step in this direction. Our specific interest was in systematic commu- nication breakdowns that might prevent people from successfully establishing or deepening relationships with one another, even when all parties involved are inclined to do so. In particular, we examined the possibility that fears of rejection prompt individuals to exhibit a signal amplification bias, whereby they perceive that their social overtures communicate more romantic interest to po- tential partners than is actually the case. Thus, we investigated relationship overtures that were of high importance to our partic- ipants, young adults in a Western cultural context, with the broader Jacquie D. Vorauer and Deanna G. Pearce, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; Jessica J. Cameron and John G. Holmes, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Study 3 was the basis of an honors thesis submitted by Deanna G. Pearce to the University of Manitoba. This research was facilitated by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to Jacquie D. Vorauer and John G. Holmes and by an SSHRC doctoral fellowship to Jessica J. Cameron. We thank Ashley Fleming, Robert George, and Chris Hildebrand for their assistance with data collection and Joelle Gigliotti and Ash Toews for serving as confederates in Studies 2 and 4. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jacquie D. Vorauer, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada. E-mail: vorauer@cc.umanitoba.ca Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 2003, Vol. 84, No. 4, 793– 812 0022-3514/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.793 793