"Happy wife, happy life" is wrong. Women are not relationship 'barometers', study finds

The adage 'happy wife, happy life' has taken root in romantic folklore for men. I'm here. doing a lot. For example, it's a catchy rhyme that fosters her husband's determined selflessness, orientation toward compromise, and her keen interest in how her wife is feeling at any given time. If is happy, wisdom goes, and all are happy. There are worse guidelines.

On the other hand, new research from the University of Alberta suggests that this rule is completely wrong.

No predictive power. Women are not barometers of relationship health. As a predictive diagnostic indicator of relationship health, women's satisfaction is the same as men's. So that adage may be half right. However, nothing rhymes with "husband". So much for folklore.

This is all due to a new in-depth statistical analysis of a large dataset of daily diary entries by people in heterosexual relationships and a longitudinal study of thousands of heterosexual couples that track the ups and downs of their relationships. It is due to person's.

“Women have been found to be a barometer. Their perception of how happy they are predicts future experiences of themselves and their partners. I found exactly the same pattern in men, and just as strongly. , co-authored with European and North American researchers, including Emily A. Impett, University of Toronto, who collected many data.

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Johnson said in an interview Tuesday, "I think this clearly challenges the accepted lore that women's experiences are prioritized or are inherently more diagnostic." It turns out to be just as important.”

“Happy wife, happy life” has a strong theoretical context that can explain its permanence in both science and culture. maybe. According to several theories, a woman's experience should be more predictive of long-term health in intimate relationships.Evolutionary psychology points to differences in the costs of pregnancy. That is, females are higher and males are lower. Social psychology points to the role that society expects women to play as emotional experts and stewards of family life. In both cases, women's views may be a better predictor of how things will work out, as women tend to care more about relationship health for good reason.

But that is where the theory breaks down into untested ambiguities.

"Nobody really knows how much predictive power women should have," Johnson said.

Turned out to be largely untested. It was also unclear whether testing should be done on a daily scale or over a longer period of time.

They conducted a daily diary study of 901 North American couples and a longitudinal German study of 3,405 couples. These were created for two parallel studies.

“Testing the barometer idea on two timescales — days and years — is a key feature of this study. Extending the barometer trope (that is, one that registers and predicts short-term change), we might expect more consistent evidence at the daily level: for example, fluctuations in women's relationship satisfaction should more reliably predict women's own and/or partner satisfaction at daily intervals compared to fluctuations in men's relationship satisfaction, or, in previous studies, using the barometer metaphor, long-term We describe our findings based on the analysis of a comprehensive panel of data, indicating that many scholars see this as a long-term process,” the paper reads.

"Contrary to expectations from longstanding views in relationship science, we analyzed over 50,000 reports of relationship satisfaction from over 4,000 mixed-gender couples. Whereas, we found no evidence that women's satisfaction is important: it is a stronger predictor of couples' relationship satisfaction than men's satisfaction on a daily or annual level."

According to Johnson, one of the key findings was that fluctuations in relationship satisfaction did not reverse from minute to minute. They last through good times and bad. The paper describes this as "emotional residue".

"Contemplate and recognize fluctuations in how things are going, and if things are unusual for you, be it good or bad, it can be a sign. Knowing one thing, we should all be doing a little better... we're going to continue on the same path in the short and long term," Johnson said in an interview.

If things are going well, pay attention, understand why, and "take advantage of it," he said. Similarly, pay attention to the negative, manage it, and contain it so that "less than usual happiness does not follow you in the future." It is based on a more solid experimental foundation as the principle of