grahamg
Old codger
- Location
- South of Manchester, UK
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-s...18-long-term-studies
Break
"The authors of the 18 studies asked about well-being in at least one of three different ways:
- Happiness. I’m calling this happiness, but the authors of the meta-analysis use the term “affective well-being.” The participants in the studies were sometimes asked about happiness and sometimes asked about unpleasant feelings such as a depressed mood (which is different from clinical depression).
- Life satisfaction. Participants are asked how satisfied they are with their lives. The authors called this “cognitive well-being.”
- Relationship satisfaction. Participants are asked how satisfied they are with their relationship with their partner.
The first question the authors of the meta-analysis answered was: How did the participants’ happiness or satisfaction change from just before they got married to just after? (Remember, “just before” was, on the average, 4 months before the wedding. Just after was the first time they were asked after the wedding.) The second question was: How did happiness or satisfaction change over time after the wedding?
Here’s what they found:
- For happiness, there was no difference in happiness from just before the wedding until just after. Over time, on the average, happiness did not change. Participants did not get either happier or less happy as the years of their marriage marched on.
- Satisfaction with life did increase from just before the wedding to just after. But then it decreased continually over time.
- Compared to life satisfaction, relationship satisfaction decreased from just before the wedding to just after. As time went on, relationship satisfaction continued to decrease at about the same rate as overall life satisfaction.
Here’s what did not happen: Except for that initial short-lived honeymoon effect for life satisfaction, getting married did not result in getting happier or more satisfied. In fact, for life satisfaction and relationship satisfaction, the trajectories over time headed in the less satisfied direction.
What is really remarkable about the combined findings of the 18 studies is that the designs were biased in favor of making marriage look good. At least 11 of the studies included only those people who got married and stayed married.
There was one sentence in the results section of the meta-analysis about how the results were different for those studies which included people who had separated, rather than tossing them out of the marriage group: “These samples did not differ in the initial reaction; however, the rate of adaptation was significantly less negative in samples without any separations.”
Translation: Negative adaptation means that people were getting less satisfied over time. If you take out the people who got separated and just look at the people who got married and stayed married, then the decrease in happiness is not as striking. That’s another way of saying what I’ve been saying all along: If you just look at the people who got married and stayed married, you are skimming off the top. You cannot generalize from just those people to offer blanket advice such as, Get married and you will be get happier...."
Break
"The authors of the 18 studies asked about well-being in at least one of three different ways:
- Happiness. I’m calling this happiness, but the authors of the meta-analysis use the term “affective well-being.” The participants in the studies were sometimes asked about happiness and sometimes asked about unpleasant feelings such as a depressed mood (which is different from clinical depression).
- Life satisfaction. Participants are asked how satisfied they are with their lives. The authors called this “cognitive well-being.”
- Relationship satisfaction. Participants are asked how satisfied they are with their relationship with their partner.
The first question the authors of the meta-analysis answered was: How did the participants’ happiness or satisfaction change from just before they got married to just after? (Remember, “just before” was, on the average, 4 months before the wedding. Just after was the first time they were asked after the wedding.) The second question was: How did happiness or satisfaction change over time after the wedding?
Here’s what they found:
- For happiness, there was no difference in happiness from just before the wedding until just after. Over time, on the average, happiness did not change. Participants did not get either happier or less happy as the years of their marriage marched on.
- Satisfaction with life did increase from just before the wedding to just after. But then it decreased continually over time.
- Compared to life satisfaction, relationship satisfaction decreased from just before the wedding to just after. As time went on, relationship satisfaction continued to decrease at about the same rate as overall life satisfaction.
Here’s what did not happen: Except for that initial short-lived honeymoon effect for life satisfaction, getting married did not result in getting happier or more satisfied. In fact, for life satisfaction and relationship satisfaction, the trajectories over time headed in the less satisfied direction.
What is really remarkable about the combined findings of the 18 studies is that the designs were biased in favor of making marriage look good. At least 11 of the studies included only those people who got married and stayed married.
There was one sentence in the results section of the meta-analysis about how the results were different for those studies which included people who had separated, rather than tossing them out of the marriage group: “These samples did not differ in the initial reaction; however, the rate of adaptation was significantly less negative in samples without any separations.”
Translation: Negative adaptation means that people were getting less satisfied over time. If you take out the people who got separated and just look at the people who got married and stayed married, then the decrease in happiness is not as striking. That’s another way of saying what I’ve been saying all along: If you just look at the people who got married and stayed married, you are skimming off the top. You cannot generalize from just those people to offer blanket advice such as, Get married and you will be get happier...."
