Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 4 (2023) 100084 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cresp Biting the forbidden fruit: The effect of flirting with a virtual agent on attraction to real alternative and existing partners ✩,✩✩ Gurit E. Birnbaum ∗ , Yael R. Chen , Kobi Zholtack , Jonathan Giron , Doron Friedman Reichman University (IDC, Herzliya), Israel a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Attractive alternatives Human-computer interaction Relationship threat Romantic relationships Virtual reality Infidelity a b s t r a c t Virtual encounters are becoming increasingly frequent. These encounters have the dual potential for either posing a threat to existing relationships or promoting relationship stability. Three studies investigated whether interact- ing with a flirtatious virtual human would inoculate individuals against the allure of real alternative partners. In all studies, partnered participants conversed with a virtual bartender of the other gender who behaved ei- ther seductively or neutrally. Then, participants interacted with a real other-gender human being and rated their perceptions of both targets. In Study 1, an attractive confederate interviewed participants. In Study 2, a con- federate sought participants’ help and recorded their helping behavior. In Study 3, participants interacted with their current partner. Results indicated that following the flirtatious virtual encounter, participants devalued the interviewer’s attractiveness, invested less time in helping the confederate, and desired their partner more. This research is the first to show that interacting with a virtual agent promotes real-world relationships. 1. Introduction Long-term romantic relationships have potential to satisfy human needs for love, intimacy, and security (e.g., Dush and Amato, 2005). And yet, throughout life, fulfillment of these needs is often challenged, as intimates will almost inevitably encounter tempting alternatives to their current partners. Although threats posed by alternative mates may activate strategies to protect the relationship against their allure (e.g., devaluation of alternatives; Lydon and Karremans, 2015), such relation- ship maintenance strategies often fail. The rate of extradyadic affairs is indeed high (estimates range as high as 70%; Allen et al., 2005; Blow and Hartnett, 2005; Thompson and O’Sullivan, 2016) and may eventually come at the cost of losing altogether the benefits a stable romantic rela- tionship brings (Gordon et al., 2004). The present research used a virtual reality platform to explore one way in which people maintain satisfying and stable relationships in the face of attractive alternatives. In doing so, we relied on research show- ing that exposure to temptations that are perceived to compete against a major goal facilitates goal shielding (i.e., prioritizing pursuit of this goal while forgoing temptations; Fishbach et al., 2003; Fishbach and ✩ Authors’ Note. We would like to thank Maya Joffe, Yoli Katz, Tom Hershkovits, Shahaf Levin, Shay Thieberg, Hovav Frank, Shani Groisman, Amit Meshulam, Shira Sayar, Rottem Peled, Danielle Sella, Anna Ben Zeev, Ofek Hirszowicz, Hadar Avayu, Yarden Rinot, Orr Borin, Dani Tzeder, Sapir Tabib, Nirit Himelfarb, Inbar Zalzman, Adi Kretzmer, Reem Shamieh, Tali Perzov, Bar Machlev, Inbal Soroker, Elad Tschuva, and Shir Licht for their assistance in the collection of the data. ✩✩ This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 1210/16 awarded to Gurit E. Birnbaum). ∗ Corresponding author at: Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Reichman University (IDC, Herzliya), P.O. Box 167, Herzliya 46150, Israel. E-mail address: birnbag@gmail.com (G.E. Birnbaum). Zhang, 2008). Specifically, we examined whether flirtatious interaction with a virtual human would lead to prioritizing the goal of relationship maintenance by increasing attraction to current partners and thereby helping inoculate participants against the appeal of real alternative part- ners. 1.1. Sustaining relationships in the face of temptation For partnered individuals, the availability of attractive alternative partners introduces a self-control conflict between the temptation to pursue the alternative mate and the long-term goal of maintaining a val- ued current relationship (Lydon and Karremans, 2015). Committed indi- viduals commonly resolve this conflict by regulating their responses to the alternative in ways that help them override temptations (Brady et al., 2020; McNulty et al., 2018). Romantically involved individuals, for ex- ample, are more likely than single individuals to be inattentive to po- tential alternative partners (Maner et al., 2008), to devalue their attrac- tiveness (Lydon et al., 2003), to remember more negative and fewer positive behaviors enacted by these potential partners (Visserman and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2022.100084 Received 20 January 2022; Received in revised form 16 December 2022; Accepted 19 December 2022 2666-6227/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)