Spousal privilege
Gender Differences in Implicit Self-Esteem Following a Romantic Partner's Success or Failure
Kate Ratliff & Shigehiro Oishi
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research examined the influence of a romantic partner's success or failure on one's own implicit and explicit self-esteem. In Experiment 1, men had lower implicit self-esteem when their partner did well at a "social intelligence" task than when their partner did poorly. Women's implicit self-esteem was unaffected by partner performance. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that Dutch men's implicit self-esteem was negatively affected by their romantic partner's success. In Experiment 4, we replicated Experiments 1-3 in both the academic and social domains, and in Experiment 5, we demonstrated that men's implicit self-esteem is negatively influenced by thinking about a romantic partner's success both when the success is relative and when it is not. In sum, men's implicit self-esteem is lower when a partner succeeds than when a partner fails, whereas women's implicit self-esteem is not. These gender differences have important implications for understanding social comparison in romantic relationships.
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Cohort Size and the Marriage Market: Explaining Nearly a Century of Changes in U.S. Marriage Rates
Mary Ann Bronson & Maurizio Mazzocco
University of California Working Paper, June 2013
Abstract:
We propose an explanation for almost a century of changes in U.S. marriage rates, in three stages. First, we show that changes in cohort size alone can account for around 50 to 70% of the variation in marriage rates since the 1930s for both black and white populations. Specifically, increases in cohort size reduce marriage rates, whereas declines in cohort size have the opposite effect. We provide the most convincing evidence on this relationship by using variation in cohort size due to differences across states in sale bans on oral contraceptives. Using this exogenous variation in access to oral contraceptives, and consequently the number of births, we provide evidence that the relationship between changes in cohort size and changes in marriage rates is causal. Next, we develop a dynamic search model of the marriage market that qualitatively generates this observed relationship, and derive a testable implication about cohort size's effect on spouses' age differences. Finally, we estimate the model and investigate its consistency with the data. We fail to reject it using the derived implication, and find that it can quantitatively explain much of the observed variation in marriage rates.
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Are There Long-Term Consequences to Growing Up Without Siblings? Likelihood of Divorce Among Only Children
Donna Bobbitt-Zeher, Douglas Downey & Joseph Merry
Ohio State University Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
Fertility decline has been considerable across economically developed countries yet relatively little is known about the social consequences of children being raised without siblings. The vast majority of research on sibship size suggests that growing up with fewer siblings is probably a good thing as children tend to do better in school when sibship size is small. Considerably less scholarship, however, has explored how growing up with few siblings influences children's ability to get along with peers and eventually develop long-term meaningful relationships. If siblings serve as important social practice partners during childhood, individuals raised with few or no siblings may struggle to develop successful social lives later in adulthood. With data from the General Social Surveys 1972-2010, we explore this possibility by testing whether sibship size during childhood predicts the probability of divorce in adulthood. We find that, among those who ever marry, respondents raised with siblings are more likely to stay married, net of several covariates.
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Laura Tach & Kathryn Edin
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Unmarried parents have less stable unions than married parents, but there is considerable debate over the sources of this instability. Unmarried parents may be more likely than married parents to end their unions because of compositional differences, such as more disadvantaged personal and relationship characteristics, or because they lack the normative and institutional supports of marriage, thus rendering their relationships more sensitive to disadvantage. In this article, we evaluate these two sources of union instability among married, cohabiting, and dating parents following the birth of a shared child, using five waves of longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Using discrete-time event history models, we find that demographic, economic, and relationship differences explain more than two-thirds of the increased risk of dissolution for unmarried parents relative to married parents. We also find that differential responses to economic or relationship disadvantage do not explain why unmarried parents are more likely to end their unions than married parents.
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Amy Muise, Emily Impett & Serge Desmarais
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across three studies, we demonstrate that pursuing sex for approach goals, such as to enhance intimacy, fuels satisfaction and pursuing sex for avoidance goals, such as to avoid disappointing a partner, detracts from satisfaction. In Study 1, we use hypothetical scenarios to provide experimental support for the associations between sexual goals and sexual and relationship satisfaction. In Study 2, a dyadic daily experience study of dating couples, we demonstrate that daily sexual goals are associated with both partners' daily relationship and sexual satisfaction. In Study 3, a dyadic daily experience study, we replicate the daily associations between sexual goals and satisfaction in a sample of long-term couples, and demonstrate that sexual goals impact partner's relationship and sexual quality 4 months later. In all studies, the associations between sexual goals and enhanced satisfaction as reported by both partners were mediated by sexual desire. Implications for research on sexual motivation and close relationships are discussed.
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Psychological distress of marital and cohabitation breakups
Lara Patrício Tavares & Arnstein Aassve
Social Science Research, November 2013, Pages 1599-1611
Abstract:
Using data from a large survey, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), this paper explores the extent to which marital and cohabiting unions differ with respect to the short-term effects of union dissolution on mental health. We compare married individuals who divorced or separated with cohabitors whose first union ended and test the hypothesis that married individuals experience larger negative effects. Results show that initial differences are not statistically significant once the presence of children is controlled for, suggesting that the presence of children is a particularly significant source of increased psychological distress in union dissolutions. However, parenthood does not explain serious psychological distress, which appears to be associated with enduring traits (the personality trait neuroticism).
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Amy Muise, Emily Christofides & Serge Desmarais
Personal Relationships, forthcoming
Abstract:
New media, such as Facebook, has implications for romantic relationships, including easing the ability to monitor a partner's activities. Across two studies we demonstrate that in response to feelings of jealousy, women are more likely than men to monitor their partner's activities on Facebook. In Study 1, participants were exposed to one of three experimental conditions meant to provoke jealousy, and their search time on a simulated Facebook environment was recorded. Jealousy predicted more time searching for women, but less for men. In Study 2, a dyadic daily experience study, on days when women (but not men) reported greater jealousy they spent more time monitoring their partner on Facebook, and anxious attachment was one mechanism that explained this association. The results are discussed in terms of gender differences in attachment and response to feelings of jealousy.
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Male infanticide leads to social monogamy in primates
Christopher Opie et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 13 August 2013, Pages 13328-13332
Abstract:
Although common in birds, social monogamy, or pair-living, is rare among mammals because internal gestation and lactation in mammals makes it advantageous for males to seek additional mating opportunities. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain the evolution of social monogamy among mammals: as a male mate-guarding strategy, because of the benefits of biparental care, or as a defense against infanticidal males. However, comparative analyses have been unable to resolve the root causes of monogamy. Primates are unusual among mammals because monogamy has evolved independently in all of the major clades. Here we combine trait data across 230 primate species with a Bayesian likelihood framework to test for correlated evolution between monogamy and a range of traits to evaluate the competing hypotheses. We find evidence of correlated evolution between social monogamy and both female ranging patterns and biparental care, but the most compelling explanation for the appearance of monogamy is male infanticide. It is only the presence of infanticide that reliably increases the probability of a shift to social monogamy, whereas monogamy allows the secondary adoption of paternal care and is associated with a shift to discrete ranges. The origin of social monogamy in primates is best explained by long lactation periods caused by altriciality, making primate infants particularly vulnerable to infanticidal males. We show that biparental care shortens relative lactation length, thereby reducing infanticide risk and increasing reproductive rates. These phylogenetic analyses support a key role for infanticide in the social evolution of primates, and potentially, humans.
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The Evolution of Social Monogamy in Mammals
D. Lukas & T.H. Clutton-Brock
Science, 2 August 2013, Pages 526-530
Abstract:
The evolution of social monogamy has intrigued biologists for over a century. Here, we show that the ancestral condition for all mammalian groups is of solitary individuals and that social monogamy is derived almost exclusively from this social system. The evolution of social monogamy does not appear to have been associated with a high risk of male infanticide, and paternal care is a consequence rather than a cause of social monogamy. Social monogamy has evolved in nonhuman mammals where breeding females are intolerant of each other and female density is low, suggesting that it represents a mating strategy that has developed where males are unable to defend access to multiple females.
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Samantha Joel et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although a great deal of attention has been paid to the role of people's own investment in promoting relationship commitment, less research has considered the possible role of the partner's investments. An experiment (Study 1) and two combined daily experience and longitudinal studies (Studies 2 and 3) documented that perceived investments from one partner motivate the other partner to further commit to the relationship. All three studies provided support for gratitude as a mechanism of this effect. These effects held even for individuals who were relatively less satisfied with their relationships. Together, these results suggest that people feel particularly grateful for partners who they perceive to have invested into the relationship, which, in turn, motivates them to further commit to the relationship. Implications for research and theory on gratitude and relationship commitment are discussed.
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On the causes and consequences of divorce
Alessandro Balestrino, Cinzia Ciardi & Claudio Mammini
Journal of Socio-Economics, August 2013, Pages 1-9
Abstract:
In most Western economies, the flourishing of the Welfare State has coincided with a decline of the role of the family: divorce has been introduced, and the number of married couples has decreased relative to that of cohabiting ones. We argue that divorce is a costly process and that its likelihood may be overestimated by limitedly rational agents; hence, it may act as a reason for the reduction of the number of marriages and the increase of cohabitation. We also show that the model's predictions are more in line with the stylised facts than those coming from a standard model with full rationality.
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Niina Metsä-Simola & Pekka Martikainen
Social Science & Medicine, October 2013, Pages 71-80
Abstract:
The annual prevalence of psychotropic medication use exceeds 10 percent in Europe and the United States, the prevalence being higher among the divorced than the married. We analysed changes in the three-month prevalence of psychotropic medication use (psycholeptics and psychoanaleptics excluding medication for dementia) by proximity to divorce, sex, medication type and socio-demographic characteristics, using register-data on 304,111 Finns between 25 and 64 years of age, of whom 23,956 divorced between 1995 and 2003 and 142,093 were continuously married from 1995 to 2004. Five years before divorce, men and women already displayed about one percentage point higher prevalence of psychotropic medication use than those who continued their marriage. The excess prevalence increased with approaching divorce and peaked six to nine months before divorce, reaching 7.3 percent (95% CI6.8-8.0) among divorcing men and 8.1 percent (95% CI 7.5-8.8) among divorcing women. The peak was followed by an 18-month decline, after which the excess compared to the continuously married settled at nearly three percentage points. The excess was not due to being socio-economically disadvantaged, and socio-demographic factors also seemed to have few modifying effects. The changes in prevalence were largest for antidepressants and almost non-existent for antipsychotics. Our results suggest that the high prevalence of psychotropic medication use among the divorced results both from selective factors already present five years before divorce and the acute and long-term causal effects of becoming and being divorced. Counselling is needed for individuals in the process of divorce, rather than economic support for divorced individuals.
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The Educational Gradient in Marriage: A Comparison of 25 European Countries
Matthijs Kalmijn
Demography, August 2013, Pages 1499-1520
Abstract:
Previous research has suggested that a new marriage gradient has emerged in the United States, with marriage becoming increasingly the privilege of the better-educated. This article examines whether this is true for Europe and explores differences in the marriage gradient among 25 European countries, using multilevel models. The focus is on the chances of living in a marital (or cohabiting) union during midlife (ages 40-49). Multilevel analyses show that the direction and strength of the gradient depend on the societal context. In countries where gender roles are traditional, better-educated women are less likely to be married than less-educated women; in gender-egalitarian countries, better-educated women are more likely to be married. For men, the educational effect on marriage is absent in traditional countries but becomes positive as gender roles become more equal. Inequality in a society also modifies the gradient: if the degree of economic inequality between educational groups in a society is strong, better-educated men are more likely to be married than less-educated men. In general, the results suggest that there may be an accumulation of social and economic disadvantages for the less well educated in more-developed countries.
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Anik Debrot et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Interpersonal touch seems to promote physical health through its effects on stress-sensitive parameters. However, less is known about the psychological effects of touch. The present study investigates associations between touch and romantic partners' affective state in daily life. We hypothesized that this association is established by promoting the recipient's experience of intimacy. Both partners of 102 dating couples completed an electronic diary 4 times a day during 1 week. Multilevel analyses revealed that touch was associated with enhanced affect in the partner. This association was mediated by the partner's psychological intimacy. Touch was also associated with intimacy and positive affect in the actor. Finally, participants who were touched more often during the diary study week reported better psychological well-being 6 months later. This study provides evidence that intimate partners benefit from touch on a psychological level, conveying a sense of strengthened bonds between them that enhances affect and well-being.
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Assortative Mating and Female Labor Supply
Christian Bredemeier & Falko Juessen
Journal of Labor Economics, July 2013, Pages 603-631
Abstract:
This paper investigates married women's hours worked disaggregated by the husband's wage decile. In the United States, this pattern has changed from downward sloping to hump shaped. We show that this development can be explained within a standard household model of labor supply when taking into account trends in assortative mating. A quantitative analysis of our model shows that female wage growth and decreasing fertility are primarily responsible for the overall increase in wives' hours since the 1970s. The fact that the most pronounced increases are observed for wives married to high-wage men is a result of trends in assortative mating.
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Marriage and the Mental Health of Low-Income Urban Women With Children
Terrence Hill, Megan Reid & Corinne Reczek
Journal of Family Issues, September 2013, Pages 1238-1261
Abstract:
Although numerous studies of the general population show that married people tend to exhibit better mental health than their unmarried counterparts, there is little evidence to suggest that the psychological benefits of marriage extend to low-income urban women with children. Building on previous research, this study uses longitudinal survey data from the Welfare, Children, and Families project (1999, 2001) to examine the effects of marriage and related transitions on changes in psychological distress among low-income urban women with children. It also tests the mediating influence of financial hardship, social support, self-esteem, and frequency of intoxication. Although entering and exiting marriage are unrelated to changes in psychological distress, continuous marriage is associated with lower levels of psychological distress from baseline to follow-up. The mediation analysis also suggests that the apparent mental health benefits of continuous marriage are partially mediated or explained by lower levels of financial hardship.
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Yuthika Girme, Nickola Overall & Jeffry Simpson
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sixty-one couples engaged in two video-recorded discussions in which one partner (the support recipient) discussed a personal goal with the other partner (the support provider). The support provider's visible and invisible support behaviors were coded by independent raters. Measures of perceived support, discussion success, and support recipients' distress during the discussion were gathered. Recipients also reported their goal achievement at 3-month intervals over the following year. Greater visible emotional support was associated with greater perceived support and discussion success for highly distressed recipients, but it was costly for nondistressed recipients who reported lower discussion success. In contrast, greater invisible emotional support was not associated with perceived support or discussion success, but it predicted greater goal achievement across time. These results advance our current understanding of support processes by indicating that the costs and benefits of visible support hinge on recipients' needs, whereas invisible support shapes recipients' long-term goal achievement.