Category: Relationships

Why people stay in relationships that are no good for them.

Fear of being single is one of the strongest predictors of settling for less in a relationship, research finds.

Both men and women experience the fear of being single.

People who are very anxious about their relationships are particularly worried about being rejected.

As a result, they can put a lot of effort into a bad relationship.

While the effort increases their investment in the relationship, they are still left feeling dissatisfied.

This means the relationship has little chance of being a happy one in the long-term.

Dr Stephanie Spielmann, who led the study, said:

“Those with stronger fears about being single are willing to settle for less in their relationships.

Sometimes they stay in relationships they aren’t happy in, and sometimes they want to date people who aren’t very good for them.

Now we understand that people’s anxieties about being single seem to play a key role in these types of unhealthy relationship behaviors.”

The results come from a series of studies of hundreds of people across different age ranges.

The study showed that people who were very anxious about their relationship were low in trust but also very dependent.

However, people who acted in an avoidant way wanted to remain independent.

Professor Geoff MacDonald, study co-author, said:

“In our results we see men and women having similar concerns about being single, which lead to similar coping behaviors, contradicting the idea that only women struggle with a fear of being single.

Loneliness is a painful experience for both men and women, so it’s not surprising that the fear of being single seems not to discriminate on the basis of gender.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Gere et al., 2013).

These regular events help couples decide whether to get married.

Rituals help couples decide whether or not to get married, new research finds.

While engaged in rituals — often during holidays or other celebrations — people learn more about each other.

Each learns how the other interacts with their family, how much they are aware of the relationship and how they deal with conflict.

Rituals might include Friday movie night, birthdays or rituals the couples create themselves.

Mr Chris Maniotes, the study’s first author, said:

“Rituals have the power to bond individuals and give us a preview into family life and couple life.

We found they help magnify normative relationship experiences.”

The study included 24 heterosexual couples whose commitment to marriage was tracked over nine months.

The researchers found that commitment to wed changed markedly in response to rituals, depending on how they went.

Rituals sometimes reinforced bonds between couples and highlighted problems at other times.

Mr Maniotes said:

“Rituals provide a unique time to review one’s partner and relationship; you get to see a host of behaviors and interactions that might normally be obscured.

Some of the ways rituals affected commitment to wed with these couples was by altering their view of their partner, giving them a new perspective.”

Holiday celebrations, for example, often provide a key insight into how a person deals with conflict.

Mr Maniotes said:

“Rituals seem to really play a role in pausing and slowing down individuals, helping them take a better look at their relationship.

They help them see, ‘this is who we are as a couple; this is who we are as a family.'”

Although rituals are just part of the answer, they still play an important role in deciding whether or not to wed, said Mr Maniotes:

“Just recognizing the importance of rituals in our lives, and the magnitude of the role they play, can help us integrate them in an intentional way.”

The study was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (Maniotes et al., 2020).

People’s relationships with different partners show remarkable similarity in the middle, settled phases.

People follow the same relationship patterns with different partners, research finds.

Once the initial honeymoon phase of a new relationship is over, it tends to settle into much the same pattern as with previous partners.

People who experience a lot of negative emotions in one relationship are likely to experience them with a different person.

The reason why people repeat the same patterns is, according to Dr Matthew Johnson, the study’s first author:

“Although some relationship dynamics may change, you are still the same person, so you likely recreate many of the same patterns with the next partner.

New love is great, but relationships continue past that point.”

The conclusions come from a study involving 554 people who were followed for years, through one relationship to its end and into the next one.

They were surveyed twice during each relationship and asked about their satisfaction with it, whether they could open up to their partner and their confidence in the relationship lasting.

Naturally, all relationships have their ups and downs, said Dr Johnson:

“Things get worse as a relationship ends, and when we start a new one, everything is wonderful at first, because we’re not involving our partner in everyday life like housework and child care.

The relationship exists outside of those things.”

However, the results showed remarkable similarity in the middle, settled phases of relationships, said Dr Johnson:

“There’s a lot of change in between, but more broadly, we do have stability in how we are in relationships.

It’s good in a sense that we as individuals can bring ourselves and our experiences into relationships; we aren’t totally trying to change who we are, and that continuity shows we stay true to ourselves.”

New relationships do not always offer a new pattern, after the honeymoon phase is over, said Dr Johnson:

“Just starting a new partnership doesn’t mean things are going to be different.

This research shows that chances are, you are going to fall into the same patterns in many aspects of the relationship.

Even if things are different, they’re not guaranteed to be better.”

The study was published in the Journal of Family Psychology (Johnson & Neyer, 2019).

Online dating psychological research reveals who uses internet dating and why, which strategies work, and uncovers the truth about lying online.

Somewhere between one-third and three-quarters of single people with internet access have used online dating to try and meet someone new.

But, over the years, we’ve heard conflicting stories about how successful online dating is.

Believe the online dating companies and it’s all sweetness and light, with wedding bells ringing in the distance; believe the media scare stories and it’s all lying, cheating, perverted social misfits.

The truth is somewhere in between, but where?

Fortunately, now there’s enough research on online dating to suggest what’s really going on.

So, here are my 10 favourite psychological insights on online dating.

1. Online daters are not losers

Contrary to the stereotype, there’s little evidence that online dating is the last resort of social misfits or weirdos.

In fact, quite the reverse.

People doing online dating are more likely to be sociable, have high self-esteem and be low in dating anxiety (Kim et al., 2009; Valkenburg, 2007).

These studies of online dating found no evidence that people use it because they can’t hack it face-to-face.

It’s just one more way to meet new people.

People’s motivations to start online dating are many and various, typically involving a triggering event like a break-up, but overall Barraket and Henry-Waring (2008) have found that people’s motivations are less individual and more social.

People aren’t using online dating because they are shy but because they have moved to a new city, are working long hours or don’t have time to meet anyone new.

2. Online daters do lie (but only a little)

Although 94 percent deny their online dating profiles contain any fibs (Gibbs et al., 2006), psychologists are a suspicious lot.

Toma et al., (2008) measured the heights and weights of 80 people doing online dating, as well as checking their driving licences for their real age.

When this data was compared with their profiles, it showed that nine out of ten had lied on at least one of the attributes measured, but the lies were only small ones.

The most frequent offender was weight, with daters either adding or shaving off an average of 5 percent.

Daters were more truthful about their age (1.5 percent deviation) and height (1.1 percent deviation).

As expected women tended to shave off the pounds, while men gave themselves a boost in height.

These lies make little difference in the real world because the vast majority of fibbing would have been difficult to detect in person.

Most people want to meet up eventually so they know big lies are going to be caught.

3. Photo fallacies in online dating

The saying ‘the camera never lies’ is bunk.

Even without apps to iron out the wrinkles, camera angles and lighting can easily change perceived attractiveness.

People instinctively understand this when choosing their profile photo so Toma and Hancock (2010) took photographs of internet daters, then judges compared these to the real profile photos.

Although less physically attractive people were the most likely to choose a self-enhancing photo, overall the differences were tiny.

The lab photos were only a little less attractive than those chosen for online dating profiles (about 5 percent for women and 4 percent for men).

Once again, people doing online dating weren’t lying much…

4. Your best look when online dating

Clues to which types of profile photos work come from one online dating site which has analysed 7,000 photographs in its database (Oktrends, 2010):

• Women had higher response-rates when they made eye-contact with the camera and looked flirty. Conversely the least successful pictures for women were looking away with a flirty face.
• Men’s best look was away from the camera, not smiling. But guys should avoid a flirty face, which was associated with a drastic reduction in messages.

They then looked at which photos were associated with the longest online conversations.

These were where it showed the dater:

• Doing something interesting
• With an animal
• In an interesting location (travel photo)

The photos associated with shorter than average conversations were (in increasing order of conversational deterrent):

• In bed (associated with slightly shorter conversations)
• Taken outdoors
• Having fun with friends
• And the most likely to deter interactions: drinking! (associated with the shortest conversations)

(Remember, these are all associations so we can’t be sure about causality.)

5. Opposites (still) don’t attract online

Even amongst a diverse population of those doing online dating, people still prefer someone who is similar to themselves.

When Fiore and Donath (2005) examined data from 65,000 people doing online dating, they found that they were choosing based on similarity to themselves.

In this respect online dating is no different from offline dating.

On average people are looking for someone about the same as themselves.

Indeed there are now many online dating sites aimed at narrower demographics such as sports fans, Jewish people or those with particular medical conditions.

6. Online dating encourages some diversity

To examine online dating diversity, Dutton et al., (2009) surveyed 2,670 married couples in the UK, Australia and Spain.

In this sample people doing online dating were more likely to have a greater disparity in age and educational background compared with those who had met in more traditional ways.

Although opposites don’t tend to attract, by its nature internet dating does encourage diverse matches.

The authors argue that it is changing the face of marriage by bring together types of people who previously never would have met.

7. Keep the first message short in online dating

Getting a response when online dating can be a hit-and-miss affair.

An online dating site has gauged the response rate by analysing more than 500,000 initial contacts sent by their members (Oktrends, 2009).

Recipients answered only 30 percent of men’s messages to women and 45 percent of women’s messages to men.

The percentage that lead to conversations is even lower (around 20 percent and 30 percent respectively).

The one-third response rate, which is backed up by academic research (Rosen et al., 2008), is partly because many online dating accounts are dead.

Oktrends also found that longer messages only yield a small improvement in response rate for men and nothing for women.

So, don’t waste your time writing an essay.

Say hi and let them check out your profile.

8. Emotionality in online dating is attractive

In a study of online dating, Rosen et al., (2008) found evidence that more intense emotionality, e.g. using words like ‘excited’ and ‘wonderful’, made a better impression on both men and women.

This study also looked at the impact of self-disclosure.

While the results were more variable, overall people preferred relatively low-levels of self-disclosure.

9. After screening, 51% meet face-to-face

For many, but not all people doing online dating, the aim is to meet someone new in the flesh.

In a survey of 759 online daters, Rosen et al., (2008) found that 51 percent of people had made a face-to-face date within one week and one month of receiving replies to their online dating.

This first meeting is often treated by those doing online dating as the final part of the screening process (Whitty & Carr, 2006).

Is this person really who they say they are?

If so, is there any chemistry?

It’s only after this stage is complete that people can get to know each other.

10. Relationshopping in online dating

Despite all the positive things the research has to say about online dating, there’s no doubt that it can be unsatisfying and aversive.

132 online daters surveyed by Frost et al., (2008) reported that they spent 7 times as long screening other people’s profiles and sending emails than they did interacting face-to-face on real dates.

Part of the problem is that people are encouraged by online dating to think in consumerist terms (Heino et al., 2010).

Users are ‘relationshopping’: looking at other people’s features, weighing them up, then choosing potential partners, as though from a catalogue; it’s human relationships reduced to check-boxes.

This is more of a criticism of the technology currently available than it is of the general idea of online dating.

Frost et al., (2008) argue that this will change as online dating services move towards more experiential methods, such as virtual dates (see: why internet dating is aversive).

How well does online dating work?

There’s only limited data about how well online dating works and most of this research has examined heterosexual daters.

Still, Rosen et al., (2008) found that 29 percent of their sample had found serious relationships through online dating.

Dutton et al., (2009) found that about 6 percent of married couples had met online in the UK, 5 percent in Spain and 9 percent in Australia.

Looking at just younger people the percentages were much higher:

• In the US, 42 percent of couples between 26 and 35 first met online.
• In the UK, 21 percent of married couples between 19 and 25 first met online.

If a long-term relationship is what you’re after, we can certainly say that it’s working for some people.

Many are no doubt put off online dating by the scare stories, especially because these stick in the mind.

Some will find the box-ticking, relationshopping aspects off-putting, or get caught out by the tensions between representing their actual and idealised selves online.

Still others will find that low levels of response kills their enthusiasm.

The research, however, suggests that most people doing online dating are relatively honest and, for some at least, it can be successful.

→ Update: The research studies listed here is now somewhat old, but most of the general findings likely still hold true even if some of the statistics are out of date.

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How being an extravert or introvert affects your marital happiness.

Women who are introverted are satisfied with their marriages for longer, a study finds.

Introverts typically prefer their own company and may be seen by others as reserved — although it is not the same as shyness.

Similarly, women who are conscientious are also more satisfied with their lives after marrying.

People who are conscientious are more careful, efficient and self-disciplined — and they aim for achievement.

The study’s authors write:

“Such a result might be explained by the tendency for conscientious individuals to place more value on relationship goals and therefore conscientious individuals may strive harder to ensure success.

This result is consistent with conscientious individuals being more satisfied with their relationships.”

In contrast, extraverted men gain the most from being married in terms of life satisfaction, while introverted men gain the least.

Indeed, introverted men were less satisfied with life after getting married than those who never married.

The conclusions come from a study of 2,015 Germans who were followed over eight years.

During this time, 468 got married and their happiness was tracked.

The results showed that, on average, people’s happiness peaked near their marriage, then faded away after a year or two.

However, happiness changed over time in different ways depending on their personality.

Introverted women and extraverted men fared the best in the long-term.

Others felt the come-down within a year or two.

The drop in happiness was sharper for men, particularly for introverted men, the authors write:

“Whilst all men experience a pre-marital increase in their life satisfaction, men that are extraverted seem to experience longer-term benefits to their life satisfaction during marriage.

Introverted men, however, experience significant drops in their life satisfaction that result in them being approximately 0.20 SD [standard deviations] lower in life satisfaction than those who never marry.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Boyce et al., 2016).