How the Color Purple is Harming Your Relationships
Our brains sometimes invent new negatives to replace ones we've eliminated. If we're in relationships where repair is happening, this phenomenon can emerge as an obstacle. Something to watch out for.
Pop quiz: If your relationship problems are decreasing mathematically and your romantic partner is observably adjusting his or her behavior in an honest attempt to connect with you emotionally, but your brain and subsequent emotions are telling you otherwise, is your relationship actually improving?
But Matt! What a silly question! If my partner were lovingly changing their behavior for my benefit and the benefit of our relationship, my mind and heart would NEVER tell me otherwise!
Awww. It’s cute because I would have totally said that too before learning about the Blue Dot Effect.
It occurred to me only after learning about the Blue Dot Effect that sometimes it doesn’t matter whether there is objective, measurable improvement. Our brains will sometimes invent new negatives to replace the ones that went away.
Simply put: Even though the world is measurably the best it’s ever been (longest life expectancy, best health care, most material wealth, most educated, most freedoms, most mobile, most access to information in human history), everyone feels shitty and complains to each other about it on social media when they’re not too busy bragging about the awesome new thing they just acquired or did to earn street cred with all of the people they went to high school with.
It’s largely the premise of Mark Manson’s book Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope. (It’s good.) Manson is among my favorite writers and podcasters because he does what I try to do only more effectively and his focus extends beyond romantic relationships.
What is the Blue Dot Effect?
It was Manson’s book which introduced me to the Blue Dot Effect, but writer Sam Brinson had written about it a year earlier not long after a group of scientists published their findings on “Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment” in the June 19, 2018 issue of Science.
The conclusion of the study was simple: When humans are on the lookout for something, like bad behavior or threats, when instances of that bad behavior or those threats lessen, people will expand their definition of “bad behavior” or “threats” to include things they wouldn’t have previously.
From Brinson’s Medium article “The Psychology of Finding What You’re Looking For”:
“The researchers ran several experiments, most of which involved participants identifying blue dots from a series that ranged in color from ‘very blue’ to ‘very purple.’ After some time, the number of blue dots would reduce, and the participants would react by selecting as blue dots those they had previously considered purple — their category of ‘blue’ expanded as the number of examples of blue decreased.”
Brinson continues:
“In further experiments, the researchers found the same effect when participants had to identify aggressive faces from a group that ranged from ‘very threatening’ to ‘not very threatening,’ and again when separating unethical research proposals from ethical ones.
“When increasing the number of blue dots instead of reducing them, the effect reverses — what had previously counted as blue suddenly gets left out. What’s more, the researchers also found the effect to occur when people were told they were doing it, and even when those people were paid to not fall into the trap.”
Important note, Brinson points out:
“This experiment seems to prove that we are incapable of making our concepts rigid, and must give in to ebbing and flowing. It should be noted, however, that this effect occurred when people were looking for instances of the concept — the blue category expanded as people sought to find blue dots, neutral faces became threatening when people were on a mission to find threatening faces.
“People in normal circumstances, who aren’t actively looking to label certain things, might not be as susceptible to the same concept shifts. If I remain indifferent to acts of aggression and acts of kindness, even if the frequency of either act changes, will I be more likely to recognize that change or to alter my definition?”
What This Means for Your Relationships
What this means is, if you’ve identified a pattern of behavior in your relationship partner that you don’t like—like a wife who feels disrespected and unloved because of an incomplete house chore or display of forgetfulness from her husband; or like a husband who feels disrespected and unloved because he perceives EVERY attempt by his wife to communicate with him about her feelings as an unprovoked and unfair attack on his character—you’re likely to find instances of your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend doing the same old bullshit things they always did even if they are legitimately doing things ‘better’ per previous conversations and agreements between the two of you.
And it’s not always because your partner is a huge, selfish asshole who will never change.
Sometimes, it’s simply because things you used to be cool with are now things you’ve labeled unacceptable. Things that were once benign are now painful. Things that were once just humans being humans are now relationship killers.
…
This tendency to find negatives even when things are improving around us is NOT a weapon for narcissists to wield in another mind-game argument where they invalidate their partner’s expressed feelings and try to convince them that the things they think and feel aren’t real.
It’s merely another opportunity for self-reflection and personal growth. An opportunity to check your own biases and bullshit at the door.
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I’m the most biased person in the world about this, but I believe our group is the best value in personal development, by far. For $49 monthly, we have a men’s meeting on Mondays at noon ET, and we have a men’s and women’s meeting on Fridays at noon ET. We meet on Zoom.
The people and conversations are great, and we’d love to have you. I am refunding new women members their first month through the end of June 2025, if you’d like to try it out.
If you’re someone like me who benefits from community and finding people who are also working on their relational lives, I hope you’ll consider joining us. - MF
Human behavior is messy. Human emotion and mental health is messy.
It’s HARD to be an adult.
And that’s why finding someone to walk side-by-side with for the rest of our lives is such a beautiful thing. Sometimes we need to be lifted up. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we’re not the only ones who are afraid or unsure of what to do next. Sometimes we need to be forgiven.
The people who promised to love us, and who we promised to love in return, deserve our best. They deserve our most generous thoughts and assumptions. They deserve our most humble and compassionate responses. They deserve our focus and energy and effort to remind them that we’ve got their back.
That they are respected, appreciated, and cherished.
That they are good enough, honored, and supported.
Sometimes, they show up as purple dots and we should lovingly and compassionately remind them they’re kind of being dicks when they do.
Other times, the people who promised to love us forever are showing up as blue dots, and because we are imperfect creatures, we think that dot is purple. We’re LOOKING FOR purple. And we treat those purple-dotting sonsofbitches accordingly.
But really, that dot is blue. Our person showed up just as they’d promised. It feels like they failed us, but really we’re failing them.
And we don’t have to fail them.
We can do better.
We must.
Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.
P.S. - I know these things can present really small to some of you in your busy lives and marriages/partnerships. But that’s exactly why developing mindfulness and communication habits around these domestic scenarios is so critical to maintaining peaceful, loving relationships. If you have trust erosion, and/or pain points and frustrations around things like this at home, consider working with me as your relationship coach to develop these skills and habits. This stuff matters. Book your next appointment here. - MF
Gottman (and likely others) refers to this as “negative sentiment override” where you get what you’re looking for and it’s all negative.
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