Does The Truth Really Hurt? The Surprising Power Of Honesty In Relationships (M)
Is brutal honesty good for love? Science has the answer.
Category: Relationships
The Truth About Age And Attraction — Do Women Really Prefer Older Men? (M)
What happens when thousands of singles go on blind dates? A fascinating trend emerges.
Recovering From Relationship Breakup: What Really Works (And What Doesn’t)
Distraction, reappraisal, or negative thinking — which works best?
Distraction, reappraisal, or negative thinking — which works best?
The best way to get over a breakup is to think about your ex negatively.
For example, consider their negative qualities or the irritating parts of the relationship.
Compared with other strategies, reappraising the relationships in negative terms helps to reduce the love felt towards an ex.
The downside of this strategy is that it puts people in a bad mood initially.
After all, it is painful to think negatively about someone that you were or are still in love with.
How to feel better
In contrast, distract yourself improves mood, for example with socialising, work, movies, TV or other activities.
However, this does not address the core issue and will not make much difference in the long-term to romantic feelings.
Indeed, distraction is really a form of avoidance.
Avoidance is often considered psychologically bad because it is running away from the problem.
The study was based on 24 people who were coming out of relationships that had lasted 2-3 years.
They were split into three groups to test different strategies for coping, with a fourth providing a control.
Along with thinking negatively about their partner and distraction, the researchers also tested trying to accept the emotions related to the breakup.
Acceptance, though, did not provide any benefit that this study could measure.
Think negative
The study’s authors write that people are likely to use thinking negatively about their ex when heartbroken:
“[people] reported [using] this strategy when they were heartbroken, albeit more to decrease love feelings than to feel better…
Even though negative reappraisal may result in negative affect at this moment, it might decrease how upset someone is about the break-up.
It has been shown that thinking negative thoughts about the relationship indeed has adaptive features when recovering from a romantic break-up.
So, negative reappraisal has an unfavorable short-term effect on affect, but may have favorable long-term effects when used after a break-up.”
The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (Langeslag & Sanchez, 2018).
The Hidden Bias That Skews How We See Friends And Family (M)
Our values shape how we see our friends and family — but not in the way you think.
Income May Determine Whether Marriage Makes You Happier — Or Not
The marriage myth: why tying the knot doesn’t reduce depression symptoms in everyone.
The marriage myth: why tying the knot doesn’t reduce depression symptoms in everyone.
Getting married is linked to lower depression symptoms in some people.
The link is strongest in households where the total income is below $60,000.
For couples earning more than this, marriage does not provide the same benefits to mental health.
In fact, at higher levels of income, people who have never married have fewer symptoms of depression.
The reason is probably that at lower incomes, both partners can pool their resources, enjoy more financial security and so worry less.
Dr Ben Lennox Kail, the study’s first author, said:
“We looked at the interrelationships between marriage, income and depression, and what we found is that the benefit of marriage on depression is really for people with average or lower levels of income.
Specifically, people who are married and earning less than $60,000 a year in total household income experience fewer symptoms of depression.
But above that, marriage is not associated with the same kind of reduction in symptoms of depression.”
Financial security matters
The findings support a theory called the marital resource model.
This is the idea that the physical and psychological benefits of marriage are partly down to the pooling of resources.
Dr Kail said:
“For people who are earning above $60,000, they don’t get this bump because they already have enough resources.
About 50 percent of the benefit these households earning less than $60,000 per year get from marriage is an increased sense of financial security and self-efficacy, which is probably from the pooling of resources.
Also, it’s interesting to note, at the highest levels of income, the never married fare better in terms of depression than the married.
They have fewer symptoms of depression than married people.
All of these are subclinical levels of depression, meaning the disease is not severe enough to be clinically referred to as depression, but can nevertheless impact your health and happiness.”
The study was published in the journal Social Science Research (Carlson & Kail, 2018).
Single And Thriving: Why Women Are Happier Alone Than Men (M)
Why single women are living their best lives — no partners required.
Modern Marriage Promises More Than Ever — But Delivers Less For Many
Marriage is about balancing what you put in with what you expect to get out.
Marriage is about balancing what you put in with what you expect to get out.
Couples are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their marriages because they are demanding more without putting in the necessary time.
Spouses either need to demand less from their relationship or put in more effort, says psychologist Professor Eli Finkel.
Increasingly, those with children put all their time into parenting and those without children concentrate on work.
As a result, there is less time to spend on the relationship.
Professor Finkel, the study’s first author, sees two options:
“You can demand less from your partner, focusing less on resource-intensive self-expressive needs, or supply more time and other resources into the marriage.”
It is not so much that people demand more from modern marriages than they used to, though, says Professor Finkel:
“The issue isn’t that Americans are expecting more versus less from their marriage, but rather that the nature of what they are expecting has changed.
They’re asking less of their marriage regarding basic physiological and safety needs, but they’re asking more of their marriage regarding higher psychological needs like the need for personal growth.”
The best marriages now are probably better than they ever were in the past, but many do not reach these exacting standards.
Professor Finkel says:
“In contemporary marriages, Americans look to their marriage to help them ‘find themselves’ and to pursue careers and other activities that facilitate the expression of their core self.
However, developing such insight requires a heavy investment of time and psychological resources in the marriage, not to mention strong relationship skills and interpersonal compatibility.”
Marriage is about balancing what you put in with what you expect to get out, says Professor Finkel:
“In general, if you want your marriage to help you achieve self-expression and personal growth, it’s crucial to invest sufficient time and energy in the marriage.
If you know that the time and energy aren’t available, then it makes sense to adjust your expectations accordingly to minimize disappointment.”
The study was published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science (Finkel et al., 2015).
The Surprising Way The Eyes Reveal If Someone Will Cheat
Watch the eyes for this sign that a partner is 50% more likely to cheat on you.
Watch the eyes for this sign that a partner is 50 percent more likely to cheat on you.
Partners who spend a fraction of a second longer looking at other people they find attractive are 50 percent more likely to cheat.
The marriages of those who can’t keep their eyes in their heads are also more likely to fail.
Other signs of infidelity were hidden in couple’s appearance and dating history.
Less attractive women were more likely to be unfaithful, it emerged.
Among men, those that reported more short-term sexual partners before marriage were more likely to have an affair.
The opposite was true for women: the more sex partners before marriage, the more faithful women were during marriage.
The conclusions come from a study in which newlyweds were shown pictures of both average-looking and very attractive men and women.
Those that had trouble looking away from the very attractive pictures were 50% more likely to cheat.
Professor Jim McNulty, the study’s first author, said:
“People are not necessarily aware of what they’re doing or why they’re doing it.
These processes are largely spontaneous and effortless, and they may be somewhat shaped by biology and/or early childhood experiences.”
Faithful newlyweds were more likely to downgrade or discount the very attractive faces they saw.
This helped them put these other options out of their mind.
The study followed 233 newlyweds for up to the first 3.5 years of their marriage.
Professor McNulty said that social media has a role to play in the US divorce rate, which is approaching 50 percent:
“With the advent of social media, and thus the increased availability of and access to alternative partners, understanding how people avoid the temptation posed by alternative partners may be more relevant than ever to understanding relationships.”
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (McNulty et al., 2018).
The 7 Biggest Relationship Deal Breakers
Even someone who has many positive qualities can strike out because of one or two negative qualities.
Even someone who has many positive qualities can strike out because of one or two negative qualities.
When people are thinking about a potential partner they consider negative qualities more than positive ones.
Even someone who has many positive qualities can strike out because of one or two negative qualities.
Dr Gregory Webster, study co-author, explained:
“We have a general tendency to attend more closely to negative information than we do to positive information.”
Here are the 7 most important deal breakers, in no particular order:
- Undesirable personality traits (e.g. anger issues, abusive, untrustworthy).
- Differing relationship goals (e.g. is uncaring or inattentive).
- Unhealthy lifestyle (e.g. smells or has poor hygiene).
- Differing religious beliefs.
- Limited social status.
- Differing mating strategies (e.g. is seeing someone else).
- Unattractiveness.
The study found that the deal breakers were more important for women and those in committed relationships.
However, different people had different deal breakers — not everyone found the same negative traits off-putting.
For example, some people enjoy impulsive personality traits in others, while others prefer someone predictable.
The results come from six different studies that surveyed over 6,500 people.
Unconsciously or not, people focussed a lot on undesirable traits in order to weed out those they considered undesirable.
Dr Webster said:
“A lot of times, just by avoiding negative traits, people will probably be fairly well off — maybe even more well off — than if they were trying to optimize the best potential partner.”
People who were more desirable to others were also more picky; in other words they had more deal breakers.
Those less fortunate had fewer deal breakers.
Focusing on negative traits is adaptive behaviour since it helps us survive, Dr Webster said:
“Things that can harm are generally more important [to pay attention to] than things that can help you.”
The study also looked at deal breakers in the context of non-romantic friendship.
Deal breakers were not as strongly adhered to for choosing friends, although some qualities, like dishonesty, were always avoided.
The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Jonason et al., 2015).
Lifelong Singles: The Truth About Their Personalities Revealed (M)
More people are staying single for life and around one-in-twenty have never had a partner by age 40.
