Category: Relationships

The trait is linked higher relationship satisfaction in both partners.

People who enjoy making others laugh at them have happier relationships.

Not minding being the ‘butt of the joke’ mainly has positive effects on relationships.

However, people who don’t like to be laughed at tend to be less happy in their relationship.

It is down to the fact that people have different styles of humour.

For example, some people enjoy ridiculing others, but don’t like to be laughed at themselves.

Some like being the centre of humorous attention, others less so.

Professor René Proyer, who led the study, said:

“These […] are personality traits that can occur at the same time, to varying degrees and in different combinations.

They can range, for example, from making harmless jokes to ridiculing others.

All of these characteristics are normal, up to a certain point — including being afraid of being laughed at.”

The study included 154 couples who separately answered questions about their relationship and their sense of humour.

The results showed that couples whose sense of humour was similar were happier.

They also found that making other people laugh at you primarily has positive effects.

Dr Kay Brauer, study co-author, said:

“Women reported more often that they tended to be satisfied with their relationship and felt more attracted to their partner.

They and their partners also tended to be equally satisfied with their sex life.”

Being afraid of being laughed at, though, generally had negative effects on relationships.

It led to mistrust and lower relationship satisfaction.

Those who primarily preferred to laugh at others were no more or less happy in their relationship, although these couples tended to have more arguments.

Dr Brauer said:

“That is hardly surprising, considering that these people often go too far and make derisive comments which can then lead to an argument.”

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The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Brauer & Proyer, 2018).

The pattern is highly damaging to some relationships, but not all.

The worst relationship pattern is where one partner wants change, and the other responds by giving them the ‘silent treatment’.

For wealthier couples, this pattern is damaging to their relationship satisfaction.

However, for lower-income couples, the silent treatment can actually benefit the relationship.

Ms Jaclyn M. Ross, the study’s first author, explains:

“Consider this example: A wife requests that her husband ask for a raise at work.

For a husband in a low-wage job with less job security, that is a risky proposition.

By showing reluctance to ask for the raise, he can preserve his self-esteem and lessen emphasis on the couple’s vulnerable financial situation.

For a wealthier couple in the same situation, the wife may perceive that the husband is unwilling to make a sacrifice for his family and that can cause friction in the relationship.”

For the study, hundreds of couples with a wide range of incomes were recruited.

Around 40 percent of couples’ income was below the federal poverty line.

The results showed that for wealthier couples the demand-withdraw pattern was linked to lower relationship satisfaction over 18 months.

However, poorer couples were more satisfied with their relationship when the husband withdrew when asked to change by his wife.

Dr Thomas N. Bradbury, study co-author, said:

“Even though it is easier for wealthier couples to access resources to address their relationship problems, it can also create higher expectations that partners will make accommodations for one another’s demands and needs that underlie their problems.

But if those expectations are not met, rifts can occur in the relationship and exacerbate the existing problems.”

Ms Ross said:

“Life circumstances may matter for relationships far more than we think — so much so that these circumstances appear to moderate the effects of communication on how happy we are in our partnerships.

Creating safe and secure environments helps to allow partners to relate well to each other and to their children, giving more people the kinds of relationships and families that will keep them healthy and happy.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Ross et al., 2018).

The skill that improves both romantic relationships and parenting skills.

Being tuned in to the other person’s needs is the simple skill that improves relationships.

Psychologists call it ‘responsive caregiving’ and it means being aware of your partner’s mood and how to respond to it.

For example, sometimes people want cheering up, other times they prefer to be left alone.

Responsive caregiving not only improves relationships between parents, but is also good for children.

The study revealed that a common set of skills improved all family relationships.

Dr Abigail Millings, who led the study, said:

“It might be the case that practicing being sensitive and responsive — for example, by really listening and by really thinking about the other person’s perspective — to our partners will also help us to improve these skills with our kids.

But we need to do more research to see whether the association can actually be used in this way.”

The study involved 125 couples and their children.

The results revealed that responsive caregiving was the key to being a good partner and was also linked to good relationships with children.

Dr Millings said:

“If you can do responsive caregiving, it seems that you can do it across different relationships.

[It is the] capacity to be ‘tuned in’ to what the other person needs.

In romantic relationships and in parenting, this might mean noticing when the other person has had a bad day, knowing how to cheer them up, and whether they even want cheering up.

[And it’s not] just about picking you up when you’re down, it’s also about being able to respond appropriately to the good stuff in life.”

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The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Millings et al., 2013).

A 20-year study reveals how emotions in marriage shape the body itself.

How people react to marital disagreements has a strong relationship with their health.

Dealing with relationship conflict by getting angry predicts blood pressure problems.

Stonewalling — that is, shutting down emotionally — is linked to stiff muscles and a bad back.

Professor Robert Levenson, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Our findings reveal a new level of precision in how emotions are linked to health, and how our behaviors over time can predict the development of negative health outcomes.”

Dr Claudia Haase, the study’s first author, said:

“We looked at marital-conflict conversations that lasted just 15 minutes and could predict the development of health problems over 20 years for husbands based on the emotional behaviors that they showed during these 15 minutes.”

The results — which come from 20 years of data — might encourage some people to consider anger management, the researchers think.

Dr Claudia Haase said:

“Conflict happens in every marriage, but people deal with it in different ways.

Some of us explode with anger; some of us shut down.

Our study shows that these different emotional behaviors can predict the development of different health problems in the long run.”

The study has followed 156 middle-aged couples since 1989.

The couples, who are all from San Francisco, are heterosexual and have been together for many years.

Every year they undergo a battery of tests, including being videotaped interacting in the lab.

They found that displays of anger and stonewalling were linked to high blood pressure and back problems respectively.

Professor Levenson said:

“For years, we’ve known that negative emotions are associated with negative health outcomes, but this study dug deeper to find that specific emotions are linked to specific health problems.

This is one of the many ways that our emotions provide a window for glimpsing important qualities of our future lives.”

The study was published in the journal Emotion (Haase et al., 2016).

Plus, the two worst ways of dealing with arguments.

People who communicate constructively are the best at handling arguments.

Instead of criticising or withdrawing, constructive communicators talk things through and look for solutions.

Indeed, the two worst ways of dealing with arguments are becoming critical or withdrawing.

This is because both create a very negative emotional climate.

As bad feelings increase, it gets harder to repair the rift.

Unfortunately, when in a bad mood, it is harder to spot any positive steps your partner might make.

The conclusions come from a study in which 98 couples kept a diary for two weeks about how they dealt with relationship conflicts.

Some people lashed out or blamed the other person, while others tried to communicate and find a solution.

Professor Brian Ogolsky, the study’s first author, said:

“When conflict occurred, it influenced the way persons rated their partner’s general efforts to work on their relationship.

If partners withdrew or become contemptuous or critical, the bad feelings lingered, and that negative emotion dampened people’s ability to process or perceive their partner’s attempts to repair what was wrong between them.”

The key, said Professor Ogolsky, is constructive communication:

“Hostile feelings don’t gain a foothold among constructive communicators — people who talk things out and work through the problem in a constructive manner.

That’s a game changer for the way a couple’s relationship will develop.”

The best problem solvers were able to take action right after the argument starts.

Professor Ogolsky said:

“Taking a moment to regroup and gather your thoughts is never a bad thing, but be careful that the moment you take doesn’t turn into a longer period of avoidance, which allows the problem to fester.”

Keeping on top of any relationship conflict is vital, said Professor Ogolsky:

“Communication is just one aspect of relationship maintenance, but it’s an important one.

If you use effective strategies to manage conflicts on a daily basis when those conflicts are small, you’re likely to create a warmer emotional climate and have better outcomes.

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The study was published in the Journal of Family Psychology (Ogolsky & Gray, 2015).

Scientists tracked strangers, roommates, and workshop participants — they all made the same surprising misjudgement.

“Our research suggests that accurately estimating how much a new conversation partner likes us–even though this a fundamental part of social life and something we have ample practice with–is a much more difficult task than we imagine.”

The ‘liking gap’

“They seem to be too wrapped up in their own worries about what they should say or did say to see signals of others’ liking for them, which observers of the conservations see right away.”

Too pessimistic

“The liking gap works very differently.When it comes to social interaction and conversation, people are often hesitant, uncertain about the impression they’re leaving on others, and overly critical of their own performance.In light of people’s vast optimism in other domains, people’s pessimism about their conversations is surprising.”

“We’re self-protectively pessimistic and do not want to assume the other likes us before we find out if that’s really true.As we ease into new neighborhood, build new friendships, or try to impress new colleagues, we need to know what other people think of us.Any systematic errors we make might have a big impact on our personal and professional lives.”

Both personality and relationship history were important in whether people cheated on their partner.

Feeling detached from their partner and having low satisfaction with the relationship are among people’s top reasons for cheating.

Availability of another suitable partner is also a crucial predictor of whether people cheat or not.

Factors that surprisingly did not have much impact were relationship commitment and length.

Both personality factors and relationship history were also important in whether people cheated on their partner.

People who are more impulsive were more likely to cheat.

Impulsive people tend to act on their immediate thoughts and emotions without thinking about the consequences.

Cheating was also more likely by people who had had more sexual partners.

The conclusions come from a survey of 123 heterosexual people aged 17 to 25, all of whom were currently in a relationship.

Among many questions, they were asked whether they had cheated by kissing or having sex outside the relationship.

The study’s authors found…

“…quality of alternatives to be the strongest predictor of both extradyadic sex inclination and extradyadic kissing inclination, suggesting that it may be a key determinant of individuals’ inclination to engage in extradyadic activities.”

Those who have had more sexual partners in the past may be more inclined to cheat because they have learned the ‘trick’ of seduction.

The authors write:

“Participants who had experienced sexual intimacy with a greater number of partners also reported greater extradyadic sex and extradyadic kissing inclination.

This inclination may be attributable to the individuals’ skills at recognizing sexual advances or recruitment of sex partners.”

Finally, men were more likely to cheat by having sex outside the relationship.

However, both men and women were equally likely to cheat by kissing outside their relationship.

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The study was published in the British Journal of Psychology (McAlister et al., 2005).