Category: Relationships

How tight is your grip on marriage?

Men with a stronger grip are more likely to be married than men with a weaker grip, new research finds.

The reason is probably that grip strength is a signal of cardiovascular health and even brain health.

Grip strength, though, was not linked to whether or not women were married.

Professor Vegard Skirbekk, the study’s first author, said:

“Our results hint that women may be favoring partners who signal strength and vigor when they marry.

If longer-lived women marry healthier men, then both may avoid or defer the role of caregiver, while less healthy men remain unmarried and must look elsewhere for assistance.”

The researchers analysed data from 5,009 adults in the Norwegian city of Tromsø.

They analysed two groups of people born in the periods 1923-35 and 1936-48.

The results showed there were more unmarried men with weaker grip strength in the younger group of men.

This reflects the lessening importance of marriage, especially in a socially progressive Scandinavian country like Norway.

Professor Skirbekk said:

“In recent decades, women are less dependent on men economically.

At the same time, men have a growing ‘health dependence’ on women.

The fact that many men are alone with a weak grip — a double burden for these men who lack both strength and a lack of support that comes from being married — suggests that more attention needs to be given to this group, particularly given their relatively poor health.”

Professor Skirbekk continued:

“New technologies may potentially offset some of the limitations that low grip strength may imply.

Social policies could also increasingly target this group by providing financial support for those who suffer the double-burden of low strength and lack of spousal support.”

The study was published in the journal SSM-Population Health (Skirbekk et al., 2018).

The cellphone behaviour that irritates everyone.

Ignoring someone in a social situation to look at a phone threatens people’s fundamental need to belong, new research finds.

It is a form of social exclusion, making others feel invisible and eroding their self-esteem.

‘Phubbing’, short for phone snubbing, was linked to poorer communication and lower relationship satisfaction, the study found.

Examples of phubbing include:

• Placing the cellphone where it can be seen during a social interaction.
• Keeping the cellphone in the hand.
• Glancing at the cellphone while talking.
• Checking the cellphone during a lull in the conversation.

The conclusions come from a series of experiments that tested the effect of different levels of phubbing; from no pubbing, through partial phubbing to extensive phubbing.

The higher the level of phubbing, the results showed, the more people felt their fundamental needs were threatened.

For the study, 153 people were shown a series of animations depicting incidents of phubbing.

Phubbing also seems to breed a vicious circle of retribution.

When you are pubbed by someone, you want to phub them back.

And so we all get used to phubbing each other.

As the researchers write:

“…phubbing behavior itself predicts the extent to which people are phubbed, so that being a phubber can result in a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle of phubbing that makes
the behavior become normative.

Research on the effects of phubbing suggests that it may create negative, resentful reactions such that people perceive their interaction to be of poorer quality, are less satisfied with their interactions, trust their interaction partner less, feel less close to their interaction partner when a phone is present, and experience jealousy.”

The study was published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology (Chotpitayasunondh & Douglas, 2018).

Phones and relationships image from Shutterstock

The most appealing sexual behaviours revealed by survey of over 2,000 men and women.

Being romantic and affectionate top the list of most appealing sexual behaviours, new research finds.

Even men found kissing and cuddling most appealing in comparison to other activities, the survey of over 2,000 men and women found.

The sample included a wide range of ages and sexual orientations.

Professor Debby Herbenick, the study’s first author, said:

“Contrary to some stereotypes, the most appealing behaviors, even for men, are romantic and affectionate behaviors.

These included kissing more often during sex, cuddling, saying sweet/romantic things during sex, making the room feel romantic in preparation for sex, and so on.”

The survey asked people what sexual behaviours they actually engaged in along with those that were most appealing to them.

Other romantic behaviours people found appealing were watching a romantic movie or giving or receiving a massage before sex.

Many people simply reported that having a little more sex would be appealing to them.

The study’s authors write:

“…one-third of women and nearly one-quarter of men had not engaged in sexual activity with anyone in the last year (consistent with NSSHB data)–and about 1 in 10 partnered Americans considered themselves monogamous but sexless—it is important to acknowledge that sizable proportions of Americans do not engage in partnered sexual activities during certain periods of their lives.”

The study was published in the journal  PLOS ONE (Herbenick et al., 2017).

Many people are attracted to a younger partner, but is it worth it in the long run?

The best age gap for marital satisfaction is…none at all, research finds.

In the long run couples who are mismatched in age tend to be less satisfied, even if they are better off at first.

Both men and women are initially particularly satisfied when they get a younger husband or wife.

Professor Terra McKinnish, who co-authored the study, said:

“We find that men who are married to younger wives are the most satisfied, and men who are married to older wives are the least satisfied.

Women are also particularly dissatisfied when they’re married to older husbands and particularly satisfied if they’re married to younger husbands.”

However, after around 6-10 years of marriage this gap disappears.

Professor McKinnish said:

“Over time, the people who are married to a much older or younger spouse tend to have larger declines in marital satisfaction over time compared to those who are married to spouses who are similar in age.”

The researchers think this could be partly down to how they respond to money worries.

Professor McKinnish said:

“We looked at how couples respond to negative shocks and in particular, if they have a major bad economic shock or worsening of their household finances.

We find that when couples have a large age difference, that they tend to have a much larger decline in marital satisfaction when faced with an economic shock than couples that have a very small age difference.”

The more difference in people’s ages, the more differing views they have on important issues like having children and spending habits.

Over time, these are bound to create flash points in the relationship.

The study was published in the Journal of Population Economics (Lee & McKinnish , 2017).

Boosting marital quality with some of the oldest (and cheesiest) techniques known to psychology.

It can be hard to keep positive feelings towards your partner in a long-term relationship.

But help is at hand in the shape of new research funded by, of all people, the US Department of Defense.

Dr Jim McNulty, the study’s first author, explained:

“The research was actually prompted by a grant from the Department of Defense — I was asked to conceptualize and test a brief way to help married couples cope with the stress of separation and deployment.

We would really like to develop a procedure that could help soldiers and other people in situations that are challenging for relationships.”

What the psychologists came up with is a kind of subtle reprogramming of the mind using images of cute animals.

The idea being that we need to have positive associations with our partners.

So, why not boost those associations automatically using some of the oldest known techniques in psychology?

Half of 144 married couples watched a stream of images, with many positive ones appearing next to images of their partner.

The control group repeatedly saw their partner’s image linked to neutral rather than positive images.

They did this 3 days a week for 6 weeks.

The procedure worked: those who saw positive images linked to their partner reported higher marital quality afterwards.

Dr McNulty said:

“I was actually a little surprised that it worked.

All the theory I reviewed on evaluative conditioning suggested it should, but existing theories of relationships, and just the idea that something so simple and unrelated to marriage could affect how people feel about their marriage, made me skeptical.”

Of course, there are many other more everyday ways to create these positive associations, however, Dr McNulty said:

“One ultimate source of our feelings about our relationships can be reduced to how we associate our partners with positive affect, and those associations can come from our partners but also from unrelated things, like puppies and bunnies.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (McNulty et al., 2017).

One in five admitted using their sport as cover for an affair.

Football, rugby and golf are the sports most likely to be used as cover for an affair by men, according to a new survey.

Men playing team sports, in general were more likely to use practice as cover for an affair.

The results come from a British survey conducted by a golf equipment retailer.

Top of the lists of sports that men admitted to using as an excuse to be away was rugby.

Here is the full list along with the percentage of men admitting to using their sport as a cover for an affair:

1. Rugby (21%)
2. Football (19%)
3. Golf (17%)
4. Racing (15%)
5. Boxing (12%)
6. Tennis (11%)
7. Cricket (9%)
8. Cycling (7%)
9. Swimming (5%)
10. Athletics (4%)

Rugby-playing bankers

A recent study that was published in an academic journal had these down as the top professions for cheaters:

1. Financial (Bankers, brokers, analysts, etc.)
2. Aviation (Pilots, flight attendants, flight pursers, etc.)
3. Healthcare (Doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, etc.)

That leads us to the conclusion that bankers who play rugby at the weekend are probably the least trustworthy partners.

They are followed by football playing pilots and those well-known cads: golfing doctors.

How can we explain all this double-dealing?

Perhaps by amnesia:

“Cheating causes people to forget their past indiscretions and makes them more likely to cheat in the future, a new study finds.

Psychologists have found that people’s memories are actually less vivid for unethical decisions they have made in the past.

They call the phenomenon ‘unethical amnesia’.

In contrast, people have no problem in remembering the unethical decisions that others have made.

A slightly more scientific explanation could be the levels of testosterone in those playing aggressive full-contact sports like rugby.

Either that or it really is amnesia from all those concussions…

We all know that first impressions count — but this study reveals they matter a lot more than many people realise.

First impressions still affect how people treat us six months after they first see us.

Even if that first impression was only seeing a picture!

Professor Vivian Zayas, the study’s senior author, said:

“Facial appearance colors how we feel about someone, and even how we think about who they are.

These facial cues are very powerful in shaping interactions, even in the presence of other information.”

For the study a group of people were shown pictures of four women.

Sometimes they were shown smiling, other times not.

Up to six months later they met the woman face-to-face and had an interaction with her.

The results showed that people’s ratings of the women were heavily coloured by their initial reaction to the photograph.

It turned out that the actual meeting only seemed to confirm the first impression that people had formed from a photograph.

Professor Zayas said:

“What is remarkable is that despite differences in impressions, participants were interacting with the same person, but came away with drastically different impressions of her even after a 20-minute face-to-face interaction.”

How is it, that people only came to confirm their earlier impressions?

Professor Zayas thinks it’s down to a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Professor Zayas explained:

“They’re smiling a little bit more, they’re leaning forward a little bit more.

Their nonverbal cues are warmer.

When someone is warmer, when someone is more engaged, people pick up on this.

They respond in kind.

And it’s reinforcing: The participant likes that person more.”

It is also due to the halo effect, Professor Zayas said:

“We see an attractive person as also socially competent, and assume their marriages are stable and their kids are better off.

We go way beyond that initial judgment and make a number of other positive attributions.

A later study revealed that people thought they would revise their judgement of someone when they actually met them.

But the reality was that first impressions really do count.

Professor Zayas said:

“…people really think they would revise.

But in our study, people show a lot more consistency in their judgments, and little evidence of revision.”

The study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality (Gunaydin et al., 2016).

Meeting image from Shutterstock

It is well-known that women prefer taller men — but does this translate into more happiness?

Around 50% of US women will not accept a romantic partner who is shorter than them (Yancey & Emerson, 2014).

Even worse news for the shorter man is an earlier study finding that only 4% of women would accept a shorter man.

Is the preference justified?

If happiness is the aim, the answer could be yes.

The bigger the height difference between husband and wife, the happier the wife, new research finds.

But this effect faded over the years.

After around 18 years of marriage the height difference was no longer linked to a wife’s increased happiness.

That the benefit of happiness lasted so long is surprising.

Usually people get used to things that make them happier relatively quickly.

This suggests height difference could be a special factor, or is a proxy for some special factor.

For example, it could be that taller men are happier men — and this happiness is infectious.

Dr Kitae Sohn, the study’s author, said:

“Although it has been known that women prefer tall men in mating for evolutionary reasons, no study (before this one) has investigated whether a taller husband makes his wife happier.”

The conclusions come from an analysis of thousands of Indonesian women, some of who were followed up over 14 years.

Dr Sohn writes in the article that the relative tallness of her husband has various advantages for the wife:

“One is the intrinsic value of height; that is, women simply like tall men, while unable to say why.

This is similar to people favouring fatty, salty, and sugary foods without knowing exactly why: such foods are essential to survival but were scarce as humans evolved – hence craving such foods increased reproductive fitness in the past.

Similarly, the female preference for male height increased women’s reproductive fitness.”

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

The very nature of the app could be depersonalising and make people feel disposable.

People using Tinder have more negative body perceptions, new research finds.

On top of worse perceptions of their body, men using Tinder also have lower self-esteem.

Tinder is a dating app with 50 million users where you swipe left or right to like or reject matches.

The very nature of Tinder — which focuses on looks and quantity of people — could be depersonalising and make people feel disposable.

Dr Jessica Strübel, one of the study’s author, said:

“Tinder users reported having lower levels of satisfaction with their faces and bodies and having lower levels of self-worth than the men and women who did not use Tinder.”

For the research 1,317 people were asked about their satisfaction with their bodies along with Tinder use and other psychological constructs.

Dr Strübel said:

“We found that being actively involved with Tinder, regardless of the user’s gender, was associated with body dissatisfaction, body shame, body monitoring, internalization of societal expectations of beauty, comparing oneself physically to others, and reliance on media for information on appearance and attractiveness.”

The nature of the study means we can’t say that Tinder is causing lower self-esteem in men and body dissatisfaction in both sexes.

It could be that people with lower self-esteem feel more drawn to these apps.

Still, the study does highlight potential problems in the way men see their bodies.

Dr Strübel said:

“Although current body image interventions primarily have been directed toward women, our findings suggest that men are equally and negatively affected by their involvement in social media.”

The study was presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Denver, Colorado.