How the better half lives
Kristin Laurin, David Kille & Richard Eibach
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We often become evangelists for our own lifestyles. When it comes to our relational status, we are rarely content to simply say "being single works for me" or "being in a relationship suits my disposition." Four studies suggest that this tendency to view one's own relational status as the universal ideal emerges in part from a desire to rationalize one's own relational status. Building on existing evidence that people are motivated to rationalize circumstances they perceive as likely to persist, we predict that participants' perceptions of the stability of their own relational status lead them to rationalize that status. Studies 1 and 2 present evidence on the association between perceptions of stability and idealizations, and rule out an alternative explanation. Studies 3 and 4 offer experimental evidence of the effect of stability on people's judgments of same- and different-status others, in contexts where relational status should carry little objective weight.
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Erin Horn et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, February 2013, Pages 30-41
Abstract:
Married adults show better psychological adjustment and physical health than their separated/divorced or never-married counterparts. However, this apparent "marriage benefit" may be due to social selection, social causation, or both processes. Genetically informed research designs offer critical advantages for helping to disentangle selection from causation by controlling for measured and unmeasured genetic and shared environmental selection. Using young-adult twin and sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Harris, 2009), we conducted genetically informed analyses of the association between entry into marriage, cohabitation, or singlehood and multiple indices of psychological and physical health. The relation between physical health and marriage was completely explained by nonrandom selection. For internalizing behaviors, selection did not fully explain the benefits of marriage or cohabitation relative to being single, whereas for externalizing symptoms, marriage predicted benefits over cohabitation. The genetically informed approach provides perhaps the strongest nonexperimental evidence that these observed effects are causal.
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Schemas of Marital Change: From Arranged Marriages to Eloping for Love
Keera Allendorf
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2013, Pages 453-469
Abstract:
In recent decades, arranged marriages have become less common in many parts of Asia. This paper explores people's schemas surrounding just such a marital change in one Indian village using semi-structured interviews (N = 30) and ethnographic fieldwork. Respondents categorize marriages into two main types: arranged marriages and elopements, also called love marriages. Arranged marriages were common in the past, while elopements are now dominant. Both types of marriages have characteristics that are perceived positively and the ideal marriage is a hybrid of the two. Respondents ascribe the rise of love marriages to educational expansion, technological change, and foreign influence. Many also see it as an inevitable part of a larger process of socioeconomic change. These schemas are strongly shaped by global influences, but also reflect multiple layers of local beliefs and cultures. The schemas also demonstrate a complex integration of both structural and ideational factors in accounting for marital change.
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Marital Satisfaction Predicts Weight Gain in Early Marriage
Andrea Meltzer et al.
Health Psychology, forthcoming
Objective: Prior research makes competing predictions regarding whether marital satisfaction is positively or negatively associated with weight gain. The health regulation model suggests that satisfying relationships facilitate the functions of marriage that promote health. Thus, spouses should be most likely to gain weight when either partner is less satisfied because marital strain causes stress that interferes with self-regulatory behaviors. The mating market model, in contrast, suggests that weight maintenance is motivated primarily by the desire to attract a mate. Thus, spouses should be least likely to gain weight when either partner is less satisfied because they should feel an increased need to attract a new mate. This longitudinal study of 169 newlywed couples evaluated each possibility.
Methods: Spouses completed measures of height, weight, marital satisfaction, stress, steps toward divorce, and several covariates biannually for 4 years.
Results: Supporting the mating market model, own and partner satisfaction were positively associated with changes in weight, and this association was mediated by steps toward divorce: Spouses who were less satisfied than usual or had partners who were less satisfied than usual were more likely to consider divorce and thus less likely to gain weight.
Conclusions: These findings challenge the idea that quality relationships always benefit health, suggesting instead that spouses in satisfying relationships relax their efforts to maintain their weight because they are no longer motivated to attract a mate. Interventions to prevent weight gain in early marriage may therefore benefit from encouraging spouses to think about their weight in terms of health rather than appearance.
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Hui Zheng & Patricia Thomas
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, March 2013, Pages 128-143
Abstract:
This study challenges two well-established associations in medical sociology: the beneficial effect of marriage on health and the predictive power of self-rated health on mortality. Using The National Health Interview Survey 1986-2004 with 1986-2006 mortality follow-up (789,096 respondents with 24,095 deaths) and Cox Proportional Hazards Models, we find the protective effect of marriage against mortality decreases with deteriorating health so that the married and unmarried in poor health are at similar risk for death. We also find the power of self-rated health to predict mortality is higher for the married than for any unmarried group. By using ordered logistic regression models, we find thresholds shift such that, compared to the unmarried, the married may not report poorer health until developing more severe health problems. These findings suggest the married tend to overestimate their health status. These two phenomena (diminishing protection and overestimation) contribute to but do not completely explain each other.
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Attitudes Toward Divorce, Commitment, and Divorce Proneness in First Marriages and Remarriages
Sarah Whitton et al.
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2013, Pages 276-287
Abstract:
A random multistate sample of married individuals (N = 1,931) was used to explore whether more positive attitudes toward divorce and weaker commitment to marriage may contribute to the greater instability of remarriages than first marriages. Remarried adults, whether or not they brought children from a previous union into the remarriage, reported marital quality (happiness and conflict) equal to those in first marriages. They also reported more positive attitudes toward divorce, which were associated with higher divorce proneness (i.e., thinking about and taking actions toward divorce). Marriage type interacted with marital quality to predict divorce proneness, such that the association between low marital quality and divorce proneness was stronger for remarried individuals than for those in first marriages. This suggests that remarried adults may be more likely than adults in first marriages to take steps toward divorce when experiencing marital distress, possibly reflecting a weaker commitment to marriage.
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Oral sex as mate retention behavior
Michael Pham & Todd Shackelford
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Men perform "mate retention" behaviors to reduce the likelihood of their partner's infidelity. One mate retention strategy men use is to increase their partner's relationship satisfaction by provisioning her with benefits. We recruited 351 men to investigate whether men perform oral sex on their partner as part of a broader benefit-provisioning mate retention strategy. In support of the predictions, men who reported performing more mate retention behaviors, in general, and more benefit-provisioning mate retention behaviors, in particular, also reported greater interest in and spent more time performing oral sex on their partner. We present limitations of the research and discuss the benefits of an evolutionary perspective for investigating oral sex as a mate retention behavior.
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Morten Frisch & Jacob Simonsen
International Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Background: Living arrangements have changed markedly in recent decades, so we wanted to provide an up-to-date assessment of mortality as a function of marital status and cohabitation status in a complete population.
Methods: We studied mortality in a national cohort of 6.5 million Danes followed for 122.5 million person-years during 1982-2011, using continuously updated individual-level information on living arrangements, socio-demographic covariates and causes of deaths. Hazard ratios (HRs) estimated relative mortality in categories of marital status, cohabitation status and combinations thereof.
Results: HRs for overall mortality changed markedly over time, most notably for persons in same-sex marriage. In 2000-2011, opposite-sex married persons (reference, HR = 1) had consistently lower mortality than persons in other marital status categories in women (HRs 1.37-1.89) and men (HRs 1.37-1.66). Mortality was particularly high for same-sex married women (HR = 1.89), notably from suicide (HR = 6.40) and cancer (HR = 1.62), whereas rates for same-sex married men (HR = 1.38) were equal to or lower than those for unmarried, divorced and widowed men. Prior marriages (whether opposite-sex or same-sex) were associated with increased mortality in both women and men (HR = 1.16-1.45 per additional prior marriage).
Conclusion: Our study provides a detailed account of living arrangements and their associations with mortality over three decades, thus yielding accurate and statistically powerful analyses of public health relevance to countries with marriage and cohabitation patterns comparable to Denmark's. Of note, mortality among same-sex married men has declined markedly since the mid-1990s and is now at or below that of unmarried, divorced and widowed men, whereas same-sex married women emerge as the group of women with highest and, in recent years, even further increasing mortality.
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Ximena Arriaga et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Partner aggression negatively affects well-being in ways that the people experiencing aggression may not expect. Individuals (n = 171) who reported aggression by their current partner completed a longitudinal study. At the start of the study, participants rated their current happiness and how happy they expected to feel if their relationship were to end. The data revealed a partner aggression-unhappiness link and evidence of misforecasting future happiness: Committed individuals overestimated their unhappiness after a breakup because they expected worse things from a breakup than actually materialized, and people who experienced high partner aggression overestimated their unhappiness because they became more happy without the partner than they had expected. Forecasting unhappiness after a breakup predicted staying in an aggressive relationship. In aggressive relationships, bias occurs not only in forecasting future happiness but also in misreading how badly one feels now.
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Marriage, Marital History, and Black-White Wealth Differentials Among Older Women
Fenaba Addo & Daniel Lichter
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2013, Pages 342-362
Abstract:
This study investigated the impact of union history and marital transitions on wealth inequality between older Black and White women (N = 7,026). Cohort data from the Health and Retirement Study show large and increasing Black-White differences in wealth. Marital and relationship histories are associated with the wealth accumulation process among older women. Women who married and stay married accumulated levels of wealth that exceeded those of other women with disrupted family lives. The marriage-wealth nexus is sensitive to a woman's position in the wealth distribution. Quantile regression results revealed that racial differences in total wealth holdings between Black and White women exist throughout the wealth distribution, whereas the relationship between current union history and wealth differentials is significant at the lower tail and middle of the distribution. Decomposition analyses highlighted the nontrivial role of racial disparities in marital histories in accounting for the racial wealth gap. As members of the baby boom generation enter their retirement years, it will be more important than ever to monitor the wealth accumulation process among older single and racial/ethnic minority women.
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Explaining Racial/Ethnic Variation in Partnered Women's and Men's Housework: Does One Size Fit All?
Vanessa Wight, Suzanne Bianchi & Bijou Hunt
Journal of Family Issues, March 2013, Pages 394-427
Abstract:
Using a national sample of 12,424 partnered women and 10,721 partnered men from the 2003-2006 American Time Use Survey, this article examines racial/ethnic variation in women's and men's housework time and its covariates. The ratio of women's to men's housework hours is greatest for Hispanics and Asians and smallest for Whites and Blacks. White and Hispanic women's housework hours are associated with household composition and employment suggesting that the time availability perspective is a good predictor for these women, but may have less explanatory power for other race/ethnic groups of women. Relative resources also have explanatory power for White women's housework time but are weak predictors for women of Other race/ethnicities. Time availability and relative resource measures show some association with White men's housework time but are generally poor predictors among other race/ethnic groups of men, suggesting that traditional models of housework allocation do not "fit" all groups equally.
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Xiaomeng Xu et al.
Neuroscience Letters, 20 September 2012, Pages 33-38
Abstract:
Early-stage romantic love is associated with activation in reward and motivation systems of the brain. Can these localized activations, or others, predict long-term relationship stability? We contacted participants from a previous fMRI study of early-stage love by Xu et al. after 40 months from initial assessments. We compared brain activation during the initial assessment at early-stage love for those who were still together at 40 months and those who were apart, and surveyed those still together about their relationship happiness and commitment at 40 months. Six participants who were still with their partners at 40 months (compared to six who had broken up) showed less activation during early-stage love in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, right subcallosal cingulate and right accumbens, regions implicated in long-term love and relationship satisfaction. These regions of deactivation at the early stage of love were also negatively correlated with relationship happiness scores collected at 40 months. Other areas involved were the caudate tail, and temporal and parietal lobes. These data are preliminary evidence that neural responses in the early stages of romantic love can predict relationship stability and quality up to 40 months later in the relationship. The brain regions involved suggest that forebrain reward functions may be predictive for relationship stability, as well as regions involved in social evaluation, emotional regulation, and mood.
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Personality Similarity and Life Satisfaction in Couples
Katrin Furler, Veronica Gomez & Alexander Grob
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study examined the association between personality similarity and life satisfaction in a large, nationally representative sample of 1608 romantic couples. Similarity effects were computed for the Big Five personality traits as well as for personality profiles with global and differentiated indices of similarity. Results showed substantial actor and partner effects, indicating that both partners' personality traits were related to both partners' life satisfaction. Personality similarity, however, was not related to either partner's life satisfaction. We emphasize the importance of thoroughly controlling for each partner's personality and for applying appropriate analytical methods for dyadic data when assessing the effect of personality similarity in couples.
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Sarah Halpern-Meekin & Laura Tach
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The symbolism of rituals creates a shared understanding of events among group members. In the context of romantic relationships, a shared understanding of relationship status transitions may be associated with greater commitment and higher quality relationships. We argue that couples with differing retrospective accounts of their premarital courtship may indicate that they did not have clear discussions or rituals marking relationship turning points. We test the association between discordance in couples' reports of premarital courtship stages and marital quality using data from married couples in a national online survey (n = 1,504). We find that couple discordance is common, particularly among former premarital cohabitors and for the less institutionalized relationship stages of dating and stayovers, and is associated with lower marital quality. Implications for relationship measurement and the meaning of couple discordance are discussed.
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I've Got You Under My Skin: Marital Biography and Biological Risk
Michael McFarland, Mark Hayward & Dustin Brown
Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2013, Pages 363-380
Abstract:
Social relationships shape adult health in profound ways. This study informs our understanding of this association by investigating how the transitions, timing, and exposures to marriage are associated with types of biological risk presumed to serve as pathways to disease and disability. Drawing on the 2005-2006 National Social Health and Aging Project (N = 1,062), the authors evaluated how marital biography was associated with cardiovascular, metabolic, and chronic inflammation risk. The results showed that the effects of marital biography were highly sensitive to gender, the dimension of marital biography, and type of biological risk. For example, marital exposure was protective of cardiovascular risk for women, but not men, whereas an earlier age at first marriage had a pernicious effect on chronic inflammation among men, but not women. Health behaviors did not explain these associations. The implications of these findings are discussed as they pertain to under-the-skin risk processes and chronic morbidity.
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Howard Markman et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, February 2013, Pages 165-172
Abstract:
This study examined the effects of premarital relationship intervention on divorce during the first 8 years of first marriage. Religious organizations were randomly assigned to have couples marrying through them complete the Prevention and Relationship Education Program (PREP) or their naturally occurring premarital services. Results indicated no differences in overall divorce rates between naturally occurring services (n = 44), PREP delivered by clergy at religious organizations (n = 66), or PREP delivered by professionals at a university (n = 83). Three moderators were also tested. Measured premaritally and before intervention, the level of negativity of couples' interactions moderated effects. Specifically, couples observed to have higher levels of negative communication in a video task were more likely to divorce if they received PREP than if they received naturally occurring services; couples with lower levels of premarital negative communication were more likely to remain married if they received PREP. A history of physical aggression in the current relationship before marriage and before intervention showed a similar pattern as a moderator, but the effect was only marginally significant. Family-of-origin background (parental divorce and/or aggression) was not a significant moderator of prevention effects across the two kinds of services. Implications for defining risk, considering divorce as a positive versus negative outcome, the practice of premarital relationship education, and social policy are discussed.
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Concealing negative evaluations of a romantic partner's physical attractiveness
Edward Lemay et al.
Personal Relationships, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies provided evidence that people hide their negative evaluations of their romantic partner's physical attractiveness. This pattern was found using self-reports of concealment (Study 1) and a behavioral observation measure (Study 2). Participants who engaged in this deception also exhibited elevated speech disfluencies, which is a deception cue. Moderators of concealment were examined. Concealment was especially pronounced for participants high in care for the partner's welfare (Studies 1 and 2), low in commitment (Studies 1 and 2), and high in attractiveness ideals (Study 2). Results suggest that people use deception to regulate their romantic partner's feelings, but that long-term orientation or desire to maintain closeness may curtail use of this strategy.
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Machiavellianism and Dating: Deception and Intimacy
Matthew Dussault, Mahzad Hojjat & Thomas Boone
Social Behavior and Personality, Spring 2013, Pages 283-294
Abstract:
We explored the relationship between Machiavellian personality, mate attraction strategies, and intimacy. Participants filled out the Mach IV and self-report questionnaires about the use of deceptive tactics in attracting potential dating partners, level of intimacy, and previous dating history. Higher scores on Machiavellianism were associated with greater likelihood of using deceptive tactics and lower levels of relationship intimacy. However, for women the relationship between Machiavellianism and deceptive strategies was moderated by the history of intimate behaviors. Implications and future directions are discussed.