A study just came out today that adds some potential insights to my earlier posts about oxytocin. (See my earlier posts where I describe what oxytocin seems to be related to and how that may affect relationships.) Moïra Mikolajczak, James J. Gross, Anthony Lane,
Olivier Corneille, Philippe de Timary, and Olivier Luminet just published a paper in the journal Psychological Science where they tested if oxytocin beefs up both trust AND gullibility or just trust. This is another of those ingenious experiments where experimenters use a game theory, exchange scenario called “The Trust” game. (Sounds like a fun game for Saturday night at a party, right?). Two participants at a time (who could not see each other) would play the game, presumably online, meaning they would not see the other participant.
The experimenters manipulated two variables: people’s exposure to oxytocin (given nasally) and cues about reliability of trustworthiness of the person they were playing the game with. Imagine you are playing this Trust game. You are going to try to maximize what you can earn which will be based on how much you decide to trust the other person. (I’ll spare you further details on that part.) You might wonder how they manipulated trustworthiness. They described, for participants, the person they were playing with in terms that implied trustworthiness or not. These descriptions of high trustworthiness or low trustworthiness given randomly, meaning, the descriptions would affect the participant’s sense of who they were playing with, but the descriptions were not really true of who they were playing with. By the way, in such experiments where any kind deception is used, participants are told immediately afterwards about it as the experiment is explained to them.
You might wonder what they told people to make the person they were playing with seem to be trustworthy or not. Here is where I might quibble a bit with their strategy, but to be trustworthy, you were described as having a major like philosophy; but you’d be tipped in the direction of thinking the other person was untrustworthy by being told he or she was in marketing. (If I were a marketing major, I would take offense. Then I’d think carefully about how to give people a better impression.) Or, you might be told the other person was active in practicing to give first aid (trusty) or loved to play violent sports (not as trusty). Note: It’s not that the less trustworthy folks were described as scum or something vile. The experimenters were simply going for less versus more trustworthy in the seeds that were planted.
What did they find? Oxytocin produced increases in trust UNLESS participants were given cues that who they were playing with was not so trustworthy. That’s pretty cool. They showed that oxytocin is not a blanket producer of blind trust. If one gets cues that another person could be someone to be leery of, oxytocin will not completely override that.
Okay, think about that some. I’ll write more in the next post about implications for love and romance. Before I do, think about what you might tell someone you know who is looking for love based on this study and other things I’ve written about oxytocin and commitment.
*
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
I'll come back to fatherhood and men in the future.
I've been thinking a lot about men and society and the role of men. Related to the editorial I linked to last time, I want to write more on these things in this space, but it's more complex things that I'm taking some time to simmer on how I want to write what I write. So, I'll come back to that sometime.
*
*
Friday, June 25, 2010
Sorry for no post in awhile. Grant renewal work overtaking me.
I plan to write something very soon on men and fathers. If you'd like to read some provocative things ahead of time, I recommend these articles.
Daddy Was Only a Donor, by sociologist Brad Wilcox.
Full documents on the underlying work are available here.
*
Daddy Was Only a Donor, by sociologist Brad Wilcox.
Full documents on the underlying work are available here.
*
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Coasting: Drive by Opportunities
As you can tell, there is something about Sliding vs. Deciding that I think a lot about. In the briefest version of the concept, our team refers to sliding as situations where a person could be thinking about what is going on and making a decision, but instead, things are just happening to that person. The idea of all here is that there are important times in relationships (or work, or projects, or whatever you are into) where we might not notice that a pretty big transition is happening that we probably should be making a decision about; instead, we are is sliding into wherever we will end up. There is a lot of sliding in romantic relationships, these days, when it comes to sex or living together or having a child—times when something pretty big and life altering is happening but many times people are not making a decision about it. I’ll say a lot more about this in the future.
Here, I want to introduce a concept that is subtly different from Sliding but that has some overlap—Coasting. Coasting is what I call it when one is moving along through life, and not really sliding into anything risky but just not noticing important choice points are whizzing by. Coasting is not noticing when were at a place where a decision could make all the difference between drifting away from one’s life goals and reaching those goals.
Metaphor time:
The risk of Sliding is somewhat like turning accidentally down a dead-end alley that has no turn offs, and as you get all the way in, you find out your reverse gear does not work. You end up in a riskier place because you slid into a place that is hard to get out of and now there are more limits on your future options.
The risk of Coasting is more like rolling on down a big highway, just cruising along, and missing a crucial turn off that was a more direct path to what you really wanted to have happen in your life. It’s sort of like being on auto-pilot. If the direction you are headed is already where you meant to go, there’s no problem with coasting along because you are already on the right road. But if you need to turn off to reach your goals, Coasting won’t do.
Think of all the places we can coast in life: Career goals. Education goals. Marriage or parenting (family) are big areas where there are opportunities you may, in the future, wish you took in terms of time and attention with those you love, but life is Coasting by.
Why it is so easy to Coast? Because it takes energy and concentration to notice when you need to make a decision or do something other than what is just happening to you. It is harder work, anytime in life, when we are making decisions. It’s especially easy to coast by important moments or opportunities when we are tired and busy. There’s just not a lot of energy left to do anything different. Doing something different requires a decision and energy to pursue it.
I hope I’m not sounding, in any way, preachy here. If I am, I’m preaching to myself as much as anyone else. I can’t imagine the person in this day and age who cannot relate to the problem of coasting. The antidote, of course, is to think about where you really want your life to be or head, and make the right turn-offs to get there. And even if one makes the right turns pretty frequently, there will still be coasting. I think the reasonable goal is to just try to make as many of the right turns (or left) as we can while accepting that we will miss some of them. Life seems to me to be more like a compass than a GPS device.
In his wonderful book, Stumbling on Happiness, researcher Daniel Gilbert makes the point that later in life, people tend to have more regrets about good things not done than bad things done. Coasting is the engine of future regrets.
*
Here, I want to introduce a concept that is subtly different from Sliding but that has some overlap—Coasting. Coasting is what I call it when one is moving along through life, and not really sliding into anything risky but just not noticing important choice points are whizzing by. Coasting is not noticing when were at a place where a decision could make all the difference between drifting away from one’s life goals and reaching those goals.
Metaphor time:
The risk of Sliding is somewhat like turning accidentally down a dead-end alley that has no turn offs, and as you get all the way in, you find out your reverse gear does not work. You end up in a riskier place because you slid into a place that is hard to get out of and now there are more limits on your future options.
The risk of Coasting is more like rolling on down a big highway, just cruising along, and missing a crucial turn off that was a more direct path to what you really wanted to have happen in your life. It’s sort of like being on auto-pilot. If the direction you are headed is already where you meant to go, there’s no problem with coasting along because you are already on the right road. But if you need to turn off to reach your goals, Coasting won’t do.
Think of all the places we can coast in life: Career goals. Education goals. Marriage or parenting (family) are big areas where there are opportunities you may, in the future, wish you took in terms of time and attention with those you love, but life is Coasting by.
Why it is so easy to Coast? Because it takes energy and concentration to notice when you need to make a decision or do something other than what is just happening to you. It is harder work, anytime in life, when we are making decisions. It’s especially easy to coast by important moments or opportunities when we are tired and busy. There’s just not a lot of energy left to do anything different. Doing something different requires a decision and energy to pursue it.
I hope I’m not sounding, in any way, preachy here. If I am, I’m preaching to myself as much as anyone else. I can’t imagine the person in this day and age who cannot relate to the problem of coasting. The antidote, of course, is to think about where you really want your life to be or head, and make the right turn-offs to get there. And even if one makes the right turns pretty frequently, there will still be coasting. I think the reasonable goal is to just try to make as many of the right turns (or left) as we can while accepting that we will miss some of them. Life seems to me to be more like a compass than a GPS device.
In his wonderful book, Stumbling on Happiness, researcher Daniel Gilbert makes the point that later in life, people tend to have more regrets about good things not done than bad things done. Coasting is the engine of future regrets.
*
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Oxytocin: I Feel Your Pain
It’s hard for me to get tired of Oxytocin stories. I’m quite attached to them. Here’s the latest, which you can read about in a story by the BBC (here). Professor Keith Kendrick, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University, conducted a pretty straightforward laboratory study of people’s reactions to different, emotionally evocative pictures (child crying, grieving older man, etc.). He found that the emotional response of men to these types of pictures was as strong as the reactions women typically have when the men had a dose of oxytocin (nasally). Usually, women have stronger “empathic” responses to such pictures than men, which could be for scads of reasons of the sort I’ve written about recently. But men closed the gap if they had the spray of oxytocin and didn’t if they has a placebo. I find this next part extra interesting and conscientious on the part of the researchers. While the men behaved differently based on oxytocin, they could not accurately guess whether they had gotten the oxytocin spray or something inert. That’s compelling.
In a second laboratory experiment, the researchers showed that those who got a little jolt of oxytocin were more reactive to, or responsive to, smiling faces that reward learning. That’s just that much more evidence of the role oxytocin might play in sociability, bonding, and caring for others.
I remember when I first read about oxytocin spray; it was in a report of a study by economist Paul Zak. He was showing that people made more trusting bargains in classic game theory scenarios in the lab if they had a bit of oxytocin (again, nasally). When I first read of that work, I thought, “How soon before this shows up in bars.” After all, all the evidence suggests that oxytocin moves people in the direction of trusting others. Zak has even speculated that the stress of poverty depresses oxytocin levels to such a degree across a community that this is just one factor among many that makes it hard to turn around deeply entrenched poverty—people cannot gain on trusting others, and without some basic trust, you can’t really have an economy that works well (or a community). Might car dealerships want oxytocin spray wafting through their waiting rooms? Obviously, car manufacturers need people to trust them or else they are not going to buy their product. Maybe that new car scent should be laced with oxytocin? Especially in test drives! (That could make that deception so like the effect of un-careful dating as to not really be funny but sobering.)
But, back to bars. Since there are really date rape drugs that seem to have some effect, would people misuse oxytocin in a similar, if less dramatic, way to influence others? I know at one point Paul Zak didn’t think this type of thing would happen, but you never know. Something that turns out to have a clear effect that can be used for good might also be used in less good ways. There’s something in the air.
*
In a second laboratory experiment, the researchers showed that those who got a little jolt of oxytocin were more reactive to, or responsive to, smiling faces that reward learning. That’s just that much more evidence of the role oxytocin might play in sociability, bonding, and caring for others.
I remember when I first read about oxytocin spray; it was in a report of a study by economist Paul Zak. He was showing that people made more trusting bargains in classic game theory scenarios in the lab if they had a bit of oxytocin (again, nasally). When I first read of that work, I thought, “How soon before this shows up in bars.” After all, all the evidence suggests that oxytocin moves people in the direction of trusting others. Zak has even speculated that the stress of poverty depresses oxytocin levels to such a degree across a community that this is just one factor among many that makes it hard to turn around deeply entrenched poverty—people cannot gain on trusting others, and without some basic trust, you can’t really have an economy that works well (or a community). Might car dealerships want oxytocin spray wafting through their waiting rooms? Obviously, car manufacturers need people to trust them or else they are not going to buy their product. Maybe that new car scent should be laced with oxytocin? Especially in test drives! (That could make that deception so like the effect of un-careful dating as to not really be funny but sobering.)
But, back to bars. Since there are really date rape drugs that seem to have some effect, would people misuse oxytocin in a similar, if less dramatic, way to influence others? I know at one point Paul Zak didn’t think this type of thing would happen, but you never know. Something that turns out to have a clear effect that can be used for good might also be used in less good ways. There’s something in the air.
*
Monday, April 12, 2010
Movin and Groovin: Do you want to be a rotator or a sitter?
Some time ago, I blogged on a cool study by Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel. In this post, I want to highlight another study by these two social psychologists. Here is the journal reference, but you might have trouble finding it if you want to read the whole thing.
Finkel, E. J., & Eastwick, P. W. (2009) Arbitrary social norms influence sex differences in romantic selectivity. Psychological Science, 20, 1290 – 1295.
Finkel and Eastwick have done a number of fascinating studies using speed-dating methods. (If you don’t know what speed-dating is, Google it. It’s not a date where you drive to the end of the block, kiss, and then return your date within 10 minutes.) In the study referenced above, they tested if the mere fact of being the one approaching others impacts how attracted you are to others. In speed-dating, there are rotators and sitters. The sitters sit still while the rotators move every minute or two to the next person they get to meet for a minute or two. Historically, men are almost always chosen to rotate and women are chosen to be the sitters. Men get to move and women get to wait for men to come to them. One more detail. Women are typically more choosey at these events than men (men indicate they would like to follow-up with more women than women do with men).
Finkel and Eastwick tested three really interesting ideas:
1. Are rotators more attracted to the people they meet in a speed-dating event than sitters?
2. Do women become more attracted more men when they are the rotators versus sitters?
3. Is there self-confidence boost from being a rotator?
Yes. Yes. Yes. (No, Harry didn’t meet Sally.) Let’s start with number 1. Part of what Finkel and Eastwick tested is if rotators are more attracted to more people simply because they are the ones on the move. In other words, does moving toward a partner give you some boost in attraction toward that potential partner merely because you are moving toward them rather than vice versa? They found solid evidence that being the one on the move—being the rotator in speed-dating—boosted attraction to others. This is similar to the effect of becoming a bit happier if you smile—after you smile. Feelings can follow behaviors.
Here’s the really smart part. Finkel and Eastwick had women be the rotators in one half of the groups and men in the other half. That way, they could test if it was really rotators who were more attracted because they were rotating and not that men were less choosey than women. Voila! It did matter. When women were rotators, they were attracted to more men than when women were sitters. The differences between men and women disappeared when women were the rotators. Pretty cool. Movin is grooving. (Of course, as Bill Coffin at the Administration for Children and Families Observed, once married, the rotating should stop. Right?)
Lastly, Finkel and Eastwick showed that this effect of being the one moving was related to self-confidence. Being the rotator was associated with more self-confidence which was associated with attraction to more people. I’m going to leave that there until the next post. Think about this and whether you think it’s uniformly better to be one or the other, and why. I’ll throw out some ideas about that next time. I may even tie these effects back to some points about sacrifice, but we’ll see about that.
*
Finkel, E. J., & Eastwick, P. W. (2009) Arbitrary social norms influence sex differences in romantic selectivity. Psychological Science, 20, 1290 – 1295.
Finkel and Eastwick have done a number of fascinating studies using speed-dating methods. (If you don’t know what speed-dating is, Google it. It’s not a date where you drive to the end of the block, kiss, and then return your date within 10 minutes.) In the study referenced above, they tested if the mere fact of being the one approaching others impacts how attracted you are to others. In speed-dating, there are rotators and sitters. The sitters sit still while the rotators move every minute or two to the next person they get to meet for a minute or two. Historically, men are almost always chosen to rotate and women are chosen to be the sitters. Men get to move and women get to wait for men to come to them. One more detail. Women are typically more choosey at these events than men (men indicate they would like to follow-up with more women than women do with men).
Finkel and Eastwick tested three really interesting ideas:
1. Are rotators more attracted to the people they meet in a speed-dating event than sitters?
2. Do women become more attracted more men when they are the rotators versus sitters?
3. Is there self-confidence boost from being a rotator?
Yes. Yes. Yes. (No, Harry didn’t meet Sally.) Let’s start with number 1. Part of what Finkel and Eastwick tested is if rotators are more attracted to more people simply because they are the ones on the move. In other words, does moving toward a partner give you some boost in attraction toward that potential partner merely because you are moving toward them rather than vice versa? They found solid evidence that being the one on the move—being the rotator in speed-dating—boosted attraction to others. This is similar to the effect of becoming a bit happier if you smile—after you smile. Feelings can follow behaviors.
Here’s the really smart part. Finkel and Eastwick had women be the rotators in one half of the groups and men in the other half. That way, they could test if it was really rotators who were more attracted because they were rotating and not that men were less choosey than women. Voila! It did matter. When women were rotators, they were attracted to more men than when women were sitters. The differences between men and women disappeared when women were the rotators. Pretty cool. Movin is grooving. (Of course, as Bill Coffin at the Administration for Children and Families Observed, once married, the rotating should stop. Right?)
Lastly, Finkel and Eastwick showed that this effect of being the one moving was related to self-confidence. Being the rotator was associated with more self-confidence which was associated with attraction to more people. I’m going to leave that there until the next post. Think about this and whether you think it’s uniformly better to be one or the other, and why. I’ll throw out some ideas about that next time. I may even tie these effects back to some points about sacrifice, but we’ll see about that.
*
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Relationship Development and Oxytocin: A Theory of Men and Women
Theory alert!
I’m going to lay out a little theory here that is one I would love to be able to test fully in the future. It has to do with some average differences in how men and women behave during earlier periods of relationship development. This builds on themes from the prior three posts. Let’s recap a few crucial points of foundation for the theory I will lay out here:
- Oxytocin levels are stimulated by many things, including affectionate and sexual touch.
- Oxytocin is a chemical that is centrally related to attachment and trust.
- There is at least some evidence (in two studies from our lab) that the sacrificial behavior of men is more related to long-term commitment than is sacrificial behavior of women.
The last point begs the question about what sacrificial behavior is linked to in women. I mentioned in the last post that Sarah Whitton and I have suggested that this is partly and simply about the fact that women are more socialized to sacrifice in romantic relationships than men—at least about daily things.
Here’s my theory to add to this mix. Maybe long-term commitment is a more important driver of sacrificial behavior in men while having a strong attachment-bond is a more important driver of sacrificial behavior in women. Further, maybe the fact that women have more robust oxytocin systems is part of a biological basis for this difference.
The implications of this possible difference are not very great in solid marriages. Both partners have an attachment-bond and both have developed clear, long-term commitment. Things will balance out in terms of the partners giving to each other.
What about early on in relationship development? What are the implications of such a difference? If my theory is correct—or even somewhat correct—it means that women will sacrifice more for their male partners than vice versa early on, and continue to do so for some time up until the point where the male catches up once a clear commitment to the future has developed. I’ve depicted it as follows.
Note that the line for sacrificial behavior of the female ramps up fast and the line for sacrificial behavior of the male catches up some time later. Please note that what I depict here is the best case, not the worst. In just one form of the worst case (or a not so great case), a female sacrifices a great deal for the male and that particular male never catches up because he never really commits deeply to the future.
If I am correct in this theory, the average female is at a disadvantage once the attachment is strong and the oxytocin is flowing up until the point that the male catches up with commitment. Further, since oxytocin levels affect trust, it could be harder for the average woman to see this imbalance for some time, because the biology has primed her to see things from a trusting perspective.
PLEASE NOTE: This theory is not saying that women are superior to men or that this is a particular problem with men. In fact, in our work, find that men are just as committed, on average, as women, in marriage. What this theory suggests is that patterns of rapid relationship development (especially when things get really physical) is something people who attach strongly and rapidly need to be aware of and be cautious about—male or female. This person may give too much and not realize it for some time.
The risk I am identifying exists in any relationship where one partner feels the need to give a lot more than they are getting back. Since relationships develop so rapidly these days, I think some form of these dynamics are happening to many couples.
*
I’m going to lay out a little theory here that is one I would love to be able to test fully in the future. It has to do with some average differences in how men and women behave during earlier periods of relationship development. This builds on themes from the prior three posts. Let’s recap a few crucial points of foundation for the theory I will lay out here:
- Oxytocin levels are stimulated by many things, including affectionate and sexual touch.
- Oxytocin is a chemical that is centrally related to attachment and trust.
- There is at least some evidence (in two studies from our lab) that the sacrificial behavior of men is more related to long-term commitment than is sacrificial behavior of women.
The last point begs the question about what sacrificial behavior is linked to in women. I mentioned in the last post that Sarah Whitton and I have suggested that this is partly and simply about the fact that women are more socialized to sacrifice in romantic relationships than men—at least about daily things.
Here’s my theory to add to this mix. Maybe long-term commitment is a more important driver of sacrificial behavior in men while having a strong attachment-bond is a more important driver of sacrificial behavior in women. Further, maybe the fact that women have more robust oxytocin systems is part of a biological basis for this difference.
The implications of this possible difference are not very great in solid marriages. Both partners have an attachment-bond and both have developed clear, long-term commitment. Things will balance out in terms of the partners giving to each other.
What about early on in relationship development? What are the implications of such a difference? If my theory is correct—or even somewhat correct—it means that women will sacrifice more for their male partners than vice versa early on, and continue to do so for some time up until the point where the male catches up once a clear commitment to the future has developed. I’ve depicted it as follows.
Note that the line for sacrificial behavior of the female ramps up fast and the line for sacrificial behavior of the male catches up some time later. Please note that what I depict here is the best case, not the worst. In just one form of the worst case (or a not so great case), a female sacrifices a great deal for the male and that particular male never catches up because he never really commits deeply to the future.
If I am correct in this theory, the average female is at a disadvantage once the attachment is strong and the oxytocin is flowing up until the point that the male catches up with commitment. Further, since oxytocin levels affect trust, it could be harder for the average woman to see this imbalance for some time, because the biology has primed her to see things from a trusting perspective.
PLEASE NOTE: This theory is not saying that women are superior to men or that this is a particular problem with men. In fact, in our work, find that men are just as committed, on average, as women, in marriage. What this theory suggests is that patterns of rapid relationship development (especially when things get really physical) is something people who attach strongly and rapidly need to be aware of and be cautious about—male or female. This person may give too much and not realize it for some time.
The risk I am identifying exists in any relationship where one partner feels the need to give a lot more than they are getting back. Since relationships develop so rapidly these days, I think some form of these dynamics are happening to many couples.
*
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Well, It’s Men: Does He Flip for Her?
[I’m sorry that took awhile to get back to this theme. I’ve been over-busy working on a grant.]
In my last post, I left you with a question about whether attitudes about sacrificing for one’s partner are more related to commitment to the future of the relationship for men or women. Well, it’s men. This doesn’t mean that we found that men were more willing to sacrifice. We found no difference between men and women on overall level of willingness to sacrifice. What I’m focusing on here is that sacrifice was more related to being committed to the future for men than women. And I decided not to bring this back to oxytocin until the next post, but that’s coming.
So, what does this mean that sacrificing may be more tied to long term commitment in men than women? Sarah Whitton and I suggested that one of the reasons this could be the case is that women are simply more socialized to “give” of themselves to others, and that this would make women more likely to sacrifice (or have positive attitudes about sacrificing) no matter how clear the future is in a relationship. Men, on the other hand, may be more likely to need to decide that a particular woman is “the one” for the future in order to really give their all to that woman. Ironically, it’s men not women that most strongly fit what we predicted beforehand in this work. After all, it only makes sense that one would be most willing to sacrifice for someone with whom they see a future. It’s just in those two studies from our lab listed in my last posting, it seems that this is most true for men and only weakly true for women (on average).
My next point go somewhat further from the data than the interpretation above. I think the point is valid and practically important, but it really is more theoretical. I’d like to test everything in this line of reason more fully in future studies. Here goes.
I think commitment for the average man is a bit more like a light switch that gets flipped on (or not) at some point with a particular women when it comes to commitment. It’s flipped or switched on once he becomes clear that she’s who he wants to be with in the future. Until it’s flipped, he may be in love and he may be great to be around, but he’s not crossed over to where he’ll give regularly for that partner without resenting it. I think the average women crosses over to giving more fully sooner in how the average relationship develops. So, if we have the average women and the average man in a relationship together, early on, I’m betting she’s going to move more quickly to fully to sacrificing than him.
Think about that. There’s no great problem if this is true except where the guy never catches up. And that’s why books like “He’s Just Not That Into You” are bestsellers, because it too often never does catch up. If commitment is more like a switch being flipped for the average male, women are at greater risk for over-giving in romantic relationships until he flips—for her. Based on this theory, I’ve often suggested to women that they be careful not to give too much until they can find the switch and see if it is working. This advice is just as good for men, by the way, in relationships where they are the ones to give too much until the commitment is becoming clear.
Next time I’ll get back to biology and oxytocin and talk about an expansion of this theory that takes oxytocin into account. I bet you can see where that’s going. And go we will, next time.
*
In my last post, I left you with a question about whether attitudes about sacrificing for one’s partner are more related to commitment to the future of the relationship for men or women. Well, it’s men. This doesn’t mean that we found that men were more willing to sacrifice. We found no difference between men and women on overall level of willingness to sacrifice. What I’m focusing on here is that sacrifice was more related to being committed to the future for men than women. And I decided not to bring this back to oxytocin until the next post, but that’s coming.
So, what does this mean that sacrificing may be more tied to long term commitment in men than women? Sarah Whitton and I suggested that one of the reasons this could be the case is that women are simply more socialized to “give” of themselves to others, and that this would make women more likely to sacrifice (or have positive attitudes about sacrificing) no matter how clear the future is in a relationship. Men, on the other hand, may be more likely to need to decide that a particular woman is “the one” for the future in order to really give their all to that woman. Ironically, it’s men not women that most strongly fit what we predicted beforehand in this work. After all, it only makes sense that one would be most willing to sacrifice for someone with whom they see a future. It’s just in those two studies from our lab listed in my last posting, it seems that this is most true for men and only weakly true for women (on average).
My next point go somewhat further from the data than the interpretation above. I think the point is valid and practically important, but it really is more theoretical. I’d like to test everything in this line of reason more fully in future studies. Here goes.
I think commitment for the average man is a bit more like a light switch that gets flipped on (or not) at some point with a particular women when it comes to commitment. It’s flipped or switched on once he becomes clear that she’s who he wants to be with in the future. Until it’s flipped, he may be in love and he may be great to be around, but he’s not crossed over to where he’ll give regularly for that partner without resenting it. I think the average women crosses over to giving more fully sooner in how the average relationship develops. So, if we have the average women and the average man in a relationship together, early on, I’m betting she’s going to move more quickly to fully to sacrificing than him.
Think about that. There’s no great problem if this is true except where the guy never catches up. And that’s why books like “He’s Just Not That Into You” are bestsellers, because it too often never does catch up. If commitment is more like a switch being flipped for the average male, women are at greater risk for over-giving in romantic relationships until he flips—for her. Based on this theory, I’ve often suggested to women that they be careful not to give too much until they can find the switch and see if it is working. This advice is just as good for men, by the way, in relationships where they are the ones to give too much until the commitment is becoming clear.
Next time I’ll get back to biology and oxytocin and talk about an expansion of this theory that takes oxytocin into account. I bet you can see where that’s going. And go we will, next time.
*
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
What Drives Sacrificing for A Partner? And Does Oxytocin Play a Role?
There is a growing body of research on the role of sacrifice in romantic relationships and marriage. It’s really interesting stuff, too—at least for a relationship geek. I’m talking (mostly) about healthy giving from one partner to another, not martyrdom or responding to one’s inner doormat. (If you keep getting rug burns from giving in your relationships, you might not be giving in healthy ways. Hey, maybe that’s another not so hot form of sliding.)
When defined in healthy ways, there are a number of studies that show that sacrifice for one’s partner and relationship is associated with all sorts of good things in a relationship—especially in marriage. But I don’t want to focus on marriage in this post. I want to focus on how relationships develop early on.
Many studies show the positive effects of sacrifice. If you want to look some up, here you go. The article by van Lange is particularly wonderful. All the articles noted here also discuss or study the downside of sacrificing (especially Impett et al.). So, for the really geeky, here are some fine citations for you (otherwise, move on):
Impett, E. A., Gable, K. P., & Peplau, L. A. (2005). Giving up and giving in: The costs and benefits of daily sacrifice in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 327-344.
van Lange, P. A. M., Rusbult, C. E., Drigotas, S. M., Arriaga, X. B., Witcher, B. S. & Cox, C. L. (1997). Willingness to sacrifice in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 72, 1373-1395.
Wieselquist, J., Rusbult, C. E., Foster, C. A., & Agnew, C. R. (1999). Commitment, pro-relationship behavior, and trust in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 942-966.
In our lab, we’ve published two studies on sacrifice in intimate relationships (which flowed out of the steady focus we have on many issues related to commitment in our lab):
Whitton, S.W., Stanley, S. M., & Markman, H. J. (2007). If I help my partner, will it hurt me? Perceptions of sacrifice in romantic relationships. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 26, 64-92.
Stanley, S. M., Whitton, S. W., Low, S. M., Clements, M. L., & Markman, H. J. (2006). Sacrifice as a predictor of marital outcomes. Family Process, 45, 289-303.
We predicted that long-term commitment to the future would be associated with willingness to sacrifice, since one should be more inclined to sacrifice for their relationship if they see a future for it. Sacrifices can be seen as a type of investment, which is something people tend to do more of when they see a future. If one’s view is all short-term, you won’t see a lot of investment in anything except “me.” We and other scholars think sacrifices perform a really crucial role in addition to the obvious benefit of generating positive behavior. It’s this. Sacrifices demonstrate commitment. They send signals that reaffirm commitment between partners. This simple theory is why you can also see many groups—gangs for example—requiring some type of overt sacrifice by a newbie to become a member. The sacrifice, like knocking over a 7-11 or something a lot worse, demonstrates seriousness about commitment in a way that just saying “I’m with you on this” can’t. Note, if you are in a new relationship that is growing toward something, and your partner desires you to engage in criminal acts to demonstrate your commitment, that’s not too good a sign. Just take note of that.
Back to our studies. We expected that long-term commitment (wanting a future together) would be strongly related to attitudes about sacrifice. We expected this to be true regardless of the sex of the respondent. What we found, though, is a substantial difference between men and women in how things work. For one of those two groups, the association between sacrifice and long-term commitment was far stronger than for the other.
Which do you think it was? Was commitment to the future more crucial for understanding sacrifice for men or for women? What do you think and why? Mull that over and in the next post I’ll tell you what I suspect. And then I’ll come back to some points (a theory) about oxytocin.
*
When defined in healthy ways, there are a number of studies that show that sacrifice for one’s partner and relationship is associated with all sorts of good things in a relationship—especially in marriage. But I don’t want to focus on marriage in this post. I want to focus on how relationships develop early on.
Many studies show the positive effects of sacrifice. If you want to look some up, here you go. The article by van Lange is particularly wonderful. All the articles noted here also discuss or study the downside of sacrificing (especially Impett et al.). So, for the really geeky, here are some fine citations for you (otherwise, move on):
Impett, E. A., Gable, K. P., & Peplau, L. A. (2005). Giving up and giving in: The costs and benefits of daily sacrifice in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 327-344.
van Lange, P. A. M., Rusbult, C. E., Drigotas, S. M., Arriaga, X. B., Witcher, B. S. & Cox, C. L. (1997). Willingness to sacrifice in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 72, 1373-1395.
Wieselquist, J., Rusbult, C. E., Foster, C. A., & Agnew, C. R. (1999). Commitment, pro-relationship behavior, and trust in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 942-966.
In our lab, we’ve published two studies on sacrifice in intimate relationships (which flowed out of the steady focus we have on many issues related to commitment in our lab):
Whitton, S.W., Stanley, S. M., & Markman, H. J. (2007). If I help my partner, will it hurt me? Perceptions of sacrifice in romantic relationships. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 26, 64-92.
Stanley, S. M., Whitton, S. W., Low, S. M., Clements, M. L., & Markman, H. J. (2006). Sacrifice as a predictor of marital outcomes. Family Process, 45, 289-303.
We predicted that long-term commitment to the future would be associated with willingness to sacrifice, since one should be more inclined to sacrifice for their relationship if they see a future for it. Sacrifices can be seen as a type of investment, which is something people tend to do more of when they see a future. If one’s view is all short-term, you won’t see a lot of investment in anything except “me.” We and other scholars think sacrifices perform a really crucial role in addition to the obvious benefit of generating positive behavior. It’s this. Sacrifices demonstrate commitment. They send signals that reaffirm commitment between partners. This simple theory is why you can also see many groups—gangs for example—requiring some type of overt sacrifice by a newbie to become a member. The sacrifice, like knocking over a 7-11 or something a lot worse, demonstrates seriousness about commitment in a way that just saying “I’m with you on this” can’t. Note, if you are in a new relationship that is growing toward something, and your partner desires you to engage in criminal acts to demonstrate your commitment, that’s not too good a sign. Just take note of that.
Back to our studies. We expected that long-term commitment (wanting a future together) would be strongly related to attitudes about sacrifice. We expected this to be true regardless of the sex of the respondent. What we found, though, is a substantial difference between men and women in how things work. For one of those two groups, the association between sacrifice and long-term commitment was far stronger than for the other.
Which do you think it was? Was commitment to the future more crucial for understanding sacrifice for men or for women? What do you think and why? Mull that over and in the next post I’ll tell you what I suspect. And then I’ll come back to some points (a theory) about oxytocin.
*
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Trust in the Fast Lane with Oxytonated Fuels
No, that’s not a suggestion for the shortest way to get to work. In the last post, I started writing about oxytocin. Let’s recap. Oxytocin is the chemical of trust, bonding, and social connection. There are other chemicals involved, but the big O is shaping up as the chief one. I’m not saying that you only trust someone because you get a jolt of oxytocin; I’m not saying that what you think, do, or decide has no part in who you end up trusting and what you do in your relationships. I’m just sayin that in addition to psychological and spiritual beings, we’re biologicals. You are a carbon-based life form, and for everything that happens that matters in your mind and social life, there is something happening chemically and neurologically in your body and brain. Oxytocin is the go-to chemical coursing in your body when you are getting attached to someone.
As I noted in my last post, lots of things can give you a jolt of oxytocin. Let me recap that list and add to it: touching, hugging, sex, kissing, a warm bath, vibration, massage, sex, tactile stimulation, genital stimulation, giving birth, sex, and/or sex. There are probably all sorts of other things, too, that cause oxytocin to get rolling but let’s focus on one in this post.
Did I mention that oxytocin released or increased during and following sex? I meant to mention that because it might matter to you or someone that you know.
It also seems pretty well understood by researchers that females (on average, research is always on average) have more robust and active oxytocin systems than males. That would make a lot of sense if you consider that it’s purpose beyond all purposes is to rapidly and massively bond a new mother to a helpless baby. Bam—big time attachment. I’m sure a lot of that must begin in the womb, but there is a big ramp up at birth. It’s, of course, really important for men to bond to their children as well, but through history, survival is at stake when it comes to the baby and the mother to bonding.
Is there any downside to this cool system? Theory alert. What I’m about to suggest is somewhat theoretical but it’s also kind of simple and obvious. By the way, that’s the best kind of theory to build—simple ideas that explain common things.
Things move fast in relationships these days. I get to talk with lots of groups of people, and when talking about some topics, I like to ask people how long it is before the average couple who meets and gets attracted has sex. Not all couples have sex. Not all couples have sex before marriage. Shocking, I know, but true. Not all couples have have sex soon after the relationships begins. Of course, if you read the hooking up literature (it’s pretty interesting), there are also lots of people who have sex before there is any type of relationship at all. If the sex is good, maybe there will be a date. But in general, when talking with groups of folks, especially those in their 20s or 30s, I rarely hear an answer longer than a few weeks when asking how long before the average couple has sex.
Back to the big O (I mean Oxytocin, not Oprah’s magazine or anything else). Oh, you thought I might have meant that! Well, I’m coming to that now. Here’s the problem with this very cool chemical. Putting it simply:
Oxytocin accelerates attachment and trust.
Oxytocin gets rolling with sex.
Sexual contact happens pretty rapidly for lots of couples—most, really.
Sooooooo . . . . .
In the absence of protective mechanisms or cultural rituals that promote going slower in developing relationships, trust and attachment are going to form strongly between partners well before those partners can possibly have evaluated whether the relationship is wise, viable, safe, and good. I don’t want to go too far out on a limb (I may do that next time), but if women have more robust oxytocin systems than men, who’s more at risk by not going slower? It does not have to be the woman, by the way, who has the stronger oxytocin reaction. I’m sure plenty of men are gifted with strong, biologically enhanced, trust circuits. No matter if someone is male or female, the cruel irony is that people who are biologically prone to be particularly gracious and giving may also be more at risk by not making careful decisions on the highway of love.
*
As I noted in my last post, lots of things can give you a jolt of oxytocin. Let me recap that list and add to it: touching, hugging, sex, kissing, a warm bath, vibration, massage, sex, tactile stimulation, genital stimulation, giving birth, sex, and/or sex. There are probably all sorts of other things, too, that cause oxytocin to get rolling but let’s focus on one in this post.
Did I mention that oxytocin released or increased during and following sex? I meant to mention that because it might matter to you or someone that you know.
It also seems pretty well understood by researchers that females (on average, research is always on average) have more robust and active oxytocin systems than males. That would make a lot of sense if you consider that it’s purpose beyond all purposes is to rapidly and massively bond a new mother to a helpless baby. Bam—big time attachment. I’m sure a lot of that must begin in the womb, but there is a big ramp up at birth. It’s, of course, really important for men to bond to their children as well, but through history, survival is at stake when it comes to the baby and the mother to bonding.
Is there any downside to this cool system? Theory alert. What I’m about to suggest is somewhat theoretical but it’s also kind of simple and obvious. By the way, that’s the best kind of theory to build—simple ideas that explain common things.
Things move fast in relationships these days. I get to talk with lots of groups of people, and when talking about some topics, I like to ask people how long it is before the average couple who meets and gets attracted has sex. Not all couples have sex. Not all couples have sex before marriage. Shocking, I know, but true. Not all couples have have sex soon after the relationships begins. Of course, if you read the hooking up literature (it’s pretty interesting), there are also lots of people who have sex before there is any type of relationship at all. If the sex is good, maybe there will be a date. But in general, when talking with groups of folks, especially those in their 20s or 30s, I rarely hear an answer longer than a few weeks when asking how long before the average couple has sex.
Back to the big O (I mean Oxytocin, not Oprah’s magazine or anything else). Oh, you thought I might have meant that! Well, I’m coming to that now. Here’s the problem with this very cool chemical. Putting it simply:
Oxytocin accelerates attachment and trust.
Oxytocin gets rolling with sex.
Sexual contact happens pretty rapidly for lots of couples—most, really.
Sooooooo . . . . .
In the absence of protective mechanisms or cultural rituals that promote going slower in developing relationships, trust and attachment are going to form strongly between partners well before those partners can possibly have evaluated whether the relationship is wise, viable, safe, and good. I don’t want to go too far out on a limb (I may do that next time), but if women have more robust oxytocin systems than men, who’s more at risk by not going slower? It does not have to be the woman, by the way, who has the stronger oxytocin reaction. I’m sure plenty of men are gifted with strong, biologically enhanced, trust circuits. No matter if someone is male or female, the cruel irony is that people who are biologically prone to be particularly gracious and giving may also be more at risk by not making careful decisions on the highway of love.
*
Friday, December 25, 2009
Waiting to Inhale: Oxytocin and Trust
This will be the first of a few posts on the chemical I spend more time thinking about than any other: Oxytocin. I would love to be able to measure oxytocin in the studies my colleagues and I do on couples but I think that ability is, technologically, some years off—at least in the way I’d want to measure it. But let me tell you why I’d love to measure it. The chemical oxytocin (a neuropeptide, to be exact) is widely assumed to be THE chemical of trust and bonding in humans. It is the chemical that floods women’s bodies at the birth of a child to enhance bonding with the newborn. It is also released in you (yes, you) by hugging, touching—and, importantly, people also get a jolt of it from sex. I’ll focus on some interesting thoughts about sex in a later post. For the moment, we’ll warm up to that by talking about talking.
There are a variety of small experiments that have tested the power of oxytocin. Apparently, you can inhale oxytocin and it will affect you—or most people, anyway. Perhaps inhale is not exactly the right term for what researchers do, but it can be put in your nose, introduced into your body in some way like that, it would likely have some short-term effect on your trust of others.
Enter a recent study that I find totally fascinating. A team of Swedish researchers (Beate Ditzen, Marcel Schaer, Barbara Gabriel, Guy Bodenmann, Ulrike Ehlert, and Markus Heinrichs) attempted to see if this trust-inducing chemical could affect how couples communicate about problem areas. Psychologically trained marital researchers in the U. S. and Europe have been videotaping couples while they communicate about issues for decades. (Perhaps you’ve noticed the small cameras around your home? Just kidding.) Hundreds of studies have come from this type of work. Couples come into a lab such as the one my colleague Howard Markman set up in our research center, and talk while being filmed. Howard, along with people such as John Gottman, Robert Weiss, and Cliff Notarius, are pioneers of this methodology. Videotaping couples while they talk allows researchers to watch the tapes over and over again in order to observe aspects of how couples communicate.
This method of studying communication allows us to study how “objectively” coded communication patterns (versus people’s personal reports of what they do, which are less reliable) relate to many other aspects of couples’ lives. For example, from such studies, we have learned a great deal about types of communication patterns that are associated with marriages running into difficulties in the future. Our books, such as Fighting for Your Marriage, focus a great deal on such things—and what to do about it.
Back to the Swedish researchers. (It just sounds sexy to be a Swedish researcher, doesn’t it?) What they found in their ingenious study fits all that we know about oxytocin. They gave couples either a snort of oxytocin or a placebo prior to talking about an area of conflict. The couples did not know which chemical they got. After studying the tapes, what they found is that those who got the oxytocin communicated more positively and less negatively during their discussions. Amazing. It’s exactly what you’d predict.
Does this mean that you should run out and get some oxytocin spray? (Oxytocin spray is available on the web. I bought some, and I’m not sure I trust that it’s really got oxytocin in it. Of course, maybe I’d trust it more to spay it up my nose before deciding if I trusted it. There’s some problem with that plan. I need a chemist.)
So, should you run out and buy some spray? Not yet, and maybe not ever (though, who knows). But here is an idea that could work for you. Suppose you and your love know you have to talk about something tricky or hard. My idea here assumes you are not already upset. In addition to the types of techniques we teach in our books and materials for couples (PREP), you could give each other a solid hug for a few minutes before talking. Heck, give it a try afterwards, too. Mutual hugs do not, currently, come with any government warning labels. And, studies suggest you’ll get some oxytocin released from a good hug. It also relieves stress. With this plan, it possible that the hug will boost oxytocin and, along with some basic communication ability or skills, you may just have a better talk than you’d otherwise expect. Are you waiting to inhale? Don’t. Try a hug.
*
There are a variety of small experiments that have tested the power of oxytocin. Apparently, you can inhale oxytocin and it will affect you—or most people, anyway. Perhaps inhale is not exactly the right term for what researchers do, but it can be put in your nose, introduced into your body in some way like that, it would likely have some short-term effect on your trust of others.
Enter a recent study that I find totally fascinating. A team of Swedish researchers (Beate Ditzen, Marcel Schaer, Barbara Gabriel, Guy Bodenmann, Ulrike Ehlert, and Markus Heinrichs) attempted to see if this trust-inducing chemical could affect how couples communicate about problem areas. Psychologically trained marital researchers in the U. S. and Europe have been videotaping couples while they communicate about issues for decades. (Perhaps you’ve noticed the small cameras around your home? Just kidding.) Hundreds of studies have come from this type of work. Couples come into a lab such as the one my colleague Howard Markman set up in our research center, and talk while being filmed. Howard, along with people such as John Gottman, Robert Weiss, and Cliff Notarius, are pioneers of this methodology. Videotaping couples while they talk allows researchers to watch the tapes over and over again in order to observe aspects of how couples communicate.
This method of studying communication allows us to study how “objectively” coded communication patterns (versus people’s personal reports of what they do, which are less reliable) relate to many other aspects of couples’ lives. For example, from such studies, we have learned a great deal about types of communication patterns that are associated with marriages running into difficulties in the future. Our books, such as Fighting for Your Marriage, focus a great deal on such things—and what to do about it.
Back to the Swedish researchers. (It just sounds sexy to be a Swedish researcher, doesn’t it?) What they found in their ingenious study fits all that we know about oxytocin. They gave couples either a snort of oxytocin or a placebo prior to talking about an area of conflict. The couples did not know which chemical they got. After studying the tapes, what they found is that those who got the oxytocin communicated more positively and less negatively during their discussions. Amazing. It’s exactly what you’d predict.
Does this mean that you should run out and get some oxytocin spray? (Oxytocin spray is available on the web. I bought some, and I’m not sure I trust that it’s really got oxytocin in it. Of course, maybe I’d trust it more to spay it up my nose before deciding if I trusted it. There’s some problem with that plan. I need a chemist.)
So, should you run out and buy some spray? Not yet, and maybe not ever (though, who knows). But here is an idea that could work for you. Suppose you and your love know you have to talk about something tricky or hard. My idea here assumes you are not already upset. In addition to the types of techniques we teach in our books and materials for couples (PREP), you could give each other a solid hug for a few minutes before talking. Heck, give it a try afterwards, too. Mutual hugs do not, currently, come with any government warning labels. And, studies suggest you’ll get some oxytocin released from a good hug. It also relieves stress. With this plan, it possible that the hug will boost oxytocin and, along with some basic communication ability or skills, you may just have a better talk than you’d otherwise expect. Are you waiting to inhale? Don’t. Try a hug.
*
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Sleeping Better Part Three
This is the last in a series of three postings I’ve written on sleep and sleeping better together as a couple. Sleep is in the news in big ways, lately, with a large study being released by the CDC here in the U. S., that researcher in England (I wrote about two posts ago) recommending that mates NOT sleep together most of the time in order to get better sleep, and various new studies coming out all the time intensifying the focus on how the sleep styles and issues of one partner affect the other. There is lot’s of good attention on what is really a fundamental health issue. My research colleagues and I (Howard Markman, Elizabeth Allen, Galena Rhoades) have been adding questions about sleep to all of our ongoing studies, because we are convinced that is much more to be learned and that it really does matter.
I wanted to mention two more issues before letting this topic go for the time being. The first topic here is snoring. Read the last two posts if you have not already done so, before I go on. Many people snore. Men snore more than women, and women are affected more negatively in their sleep by their husbands’ snoring. If the snoring is regular and seems pretty intense, it would be wise to get a medical evaluation before doing anything else. Snoring can be a sign of serious medical problems, especially sleep apnea. If you or your mate sounds anything like a freight train at night (or even the Little Engine that Could not-stop-snoring), get it checked out with your doctor. There are treatments for sleep apnea and some are very effective (and some are more effective than others). Many people go a long time, if ever, before getting it checked, and many other things about the quality of life will suffer for years if you let it go.
Now, for some simple advice to couples with snoring issues. Make it okay for the one who does not snore to wake up, poke, prod, roll, WHATEVER, the other in order to get that snoring partner to shift positions and stop snoring. I forget which of the various sleep studies I was reading that made this point, but apparently many women (and some men) lay awake being polite and not waking their snoring partner to get them to move, and thereby routinely suffer from poor sleep. That’s not good. Talk together, and work as a team, to make it okay to use whatever verbal or non-verbal signal you both agree on to allow the one to get the other to move it.
The second topic I want to address in this post is simply this: Sleep researchers believe another problem for many couples is the motion of one partner affecting the other’s ability to remain asleep. There are a couple of ways to think about this. Does one toss and turn and roll around a lot more than the other, and does that movement wake the other up? Or, perhaps one partner has a different type of work (or sleep) schedule that means one is coming to bed after the other is asleep, or waking up while the other is still planning to sleep, and the movement in and out of the bed wakes up the other.
Here are some simple ideas for dealing with this problem. First, work as a team to agree on how to handle some of this, especially the different schedules thing. Talk about it and what each can do not to disturb the sleep of the other. Second, consider getting a type of mattress that isolates motion. Some mattresses do this a lot more effectively than others. As I noted two posts ago, I’ve been working with Tempur-Pedic this year, and it’s been really fun. Note: there’s your official notice that I have this association. Now I can go on to tell you that this is one of their big selling points. They are the ones with the commercials (and funny videos on You-Tube; seriously, a lot of them, and some of them are hilarious) showing one person jumping up and down and it not bothering a glass of wine or the partner. (If you are married to a glass of wine, this could be especially important advice. Of course, you have other issues we could talk about.) Motion can really be dampened down a great deal with certain types of mattresses. By the way, Consumer Reports has great information on mattresses and what people buy and are happiest with, and it’s worth a look if you end up thinking that a new mattress is part of strategies to gain blissful sleep.
Sleep is a serious issue. It’s probably just as important for how marriages will do over time as how couples handle money. We just know more about the money stuff, but that’s only because most researchers in my field have not been paying a lot of attention to sleep. It can really pay off if two people work as a team to get the best night’s sleep possible. Sleep comes up every single day of your life. If you snooze, you lose. No, that’s not right. If you snooze, you win.
*
I wanted to mention two more issues before letting this topic go for the time being. The first topic here is snoring. Read the last two posts if you have not already done so, before I go on. Many people snore. Men snore more than women, and women are affected more negatively in their sleep by their husbands’ snoring. If the snoring is regular and seems pretty intense, it would be wise to get a medical evaluation before doing anything else. Snoring can be a sign of serious medical problems, especially sleep apnea. If you or your mate sounds anything like a freight train at night (or even the Little Engine that Could not-stop-snoring), get it checked out with your doctor. There are treatments for sleep apnea and some are very effective (and some are more effective than others). Many people go a long time, if ever, before getting it checked, and many other things about the quality of life will suffer for years if you let it go.
Now, for some simple advice to couples with snoring issues. Make it okay for the one who does not snore to wake up, poke, prod, roll, WHATEVER, the other in order to get that snoring partner to shift positions and stop snoring. I forget which of the various sleep studies I was reading that made this point, but apparently many women (and some men) lay awake being polite and not waking their snoring partner to get them to move, and thereby routinely suffer from poor sleep. That’s not good. Talk together, and work as a team, to make it okay to use whatever verbal or non-verbal signal you both agree on to allow the one to get the other to move it.
The second topic I want to address in this post is simply this: Sleep researchers believe another problem for many couples is the motion of one partner affecting the other’s ability to remain asleep. There are a couple of ways to think about this. Does one toss and turn and roll around a lot more than the other, and does that movement wake the other up? Or, perhaps one partner has a different type of work (or sleep) schedule that means one is coming to bed after the other is asleep, or waking up while the other is still planning to sleep, and the movement in and out of the bed wakes up the other.
Here are some simple ideas for dealing with this problem. First, work as a team to agree on how to handle some of this, especially the different schedules thing. Talk about it and what each can do not to disturb the sleep of the other. Second, consider getting a type of mattress that isolates motion. Some mattresses do this a lot more effectively than others. As I noted two posts ago, I’ve been working with Tempur-Pedic this year, and it’s been really fun. Note: there’s your official notice that I have this association. Now I can go on to tell you that this is one of their big selling points. They are the ones with the commercials (and funny videos on You-Tube; seriously, a lot of them, and some of them are hilarious) showing one person jumping up and down and it not bothering a glass of wine or the partner. (If you are married to a glass of wine, this could be especially important advice. Of course, you have other issues we could talk about.) Motion can really be dampened down a great deal with certain types of mattresses. By the way, Consumer Reports has great information on mattresses and what people buy and are happiest with, and it’s worth a look if you end up thinking that a new mattress is part of strategies to gain blissful sleep.
Sleep is a serious issue. It’s probably just as important for how marriages will do over time as how couples handle money. We just know more about the money stuff, but that’s only because most researchers in my field have not been paying a lot of attention to sleep. It can really pay off if two people work as a team to get the best night’s sleep possible. Sleep comes up every single day of your life. If you snooze, you lose. No, that’s not right. If you snooze, you win.
*
Friday, November 13, 2009
Sleeping Better Together
As I said in my last post, some sleep experts believe that most people would sleep better if they didn’t sleep regularly with their mate. Sleeping alone may produce the best night sleep for many people. Of course, even if true, most people are not going for this. Further, research by Wendy Troxel at the University of Pittsburgh suggests that happily married women sleep best of all women.
What’s a couple to do? I have a few ideas, but first, how many couples don’t regularly sleep together? Turns out, it’s a pretty big number. The National Sleep Foundation did a national survey in 2001 and again in 2005, and found that the number of married folks who reported not regularly sleeping in the same bed as their mate jumped from 12% to 23%. If that finding is totally solid, it’s an amazing change in such a basic pattern in life. It suggests that people truly are having more sleep problems than before, and some are resorting to sleeping alone to deal with it.
Of course, some couples who are not sleeping together are probably doing so because of not getting along well together. That would be nothing new, though, and couldn’t account for the increase. Still, it’s worth pointing out that some couples sleep apart because they just want to be apart. When I was little, growing up in Kettering Ohio, there was a time when this cranky couple lived next to us. I knew that this couple had separate bedrooms. I don’t remember how I know this, because I can’t recall ever being in their home, but I did know this and I remember thinking that it was odd. But I also remember how regularly this woman yelled at one of my brothers, who, I would add, was gifted at getting her riled up. She also sneered a great deal at all of us. She was not a happy person but she was gifted at sneering. I’m not sure what was up with her, but I don’t think she was happy, nor do I think they were happy as a couple. Having separate bedrooms might have been part of the only way that their marriage could work. (One day, they were gone. We were on vacation when they moved out, and all of a sudden, a perfectly lovely and delightful, non-sneering family had moved in. Happy days.)
Back to couples and problems with sleep. What are the problems that couples who are otherwise doing fine have with sleep? There are three I’ve been thinking a lot about: tension, motion, and snoring. The way I’m using the term here, “tension” is the one that’s most related to the research my colleagues (especially Howard Markman) and I have done over the years on how couples communicate and handle conflict. What I’m talking about here is tension between partners. Sleep is something that happens best when you are relaxed and not being stimulated (well, not stimulated in a stimulating way; a great massage might help you sleep and it’s obviously a kind of stimulation). When two partners are upset with each other, they are less likely to fall asleep as quickly and sleep as soundly.
Vicious cycle time: Research shows that when people don’t sleep well on a given night, they are more irritable and negative with their partner the next day. So poor sleep leads to more negatives between partners. The bummer is that those increased negatives also make it harder to sleep the next night.
To summarize: Tension bad. Sleep good. Tension makes sleep bad. Bad sleep means more tension. Bad spiral to get into and hard spiral to get out of.
It’s very clear that sleep is related to everything about personal health and wellbeing. If you are not sleeping well, everything else in life will suffer. Everything else in life includes your marriage. There is a lot at stake with sleep problems.
Here’s some simple advice. It’s like everything else that we (my colleagues and I) recommend in our books. Take control of your conflicts and don’t let them control you. How do you take control of how conflict and tension affects your sleep? You need to decide on a plan that can help both of you to sleep better, and then stick to it. Take charge and don’t let things slide if your sleep is suffering.
Agree not to talk about issues, conflicts, or problems within two hours of the time you should be falling asleep. Just don’t let stuff come up then, and when it does, get it back on the shelf quickly. Get good at not sliding into that mode near bedtime. That also means you need to find other times to have these talks, when you are at your best, and can work together as well as possible. Otherwise, you’re just asking for these issues to come up when you happen to be together, as you near time to sleep. Sometimes sleeping well together isn’t something you can accomplish lying down.
*
What’s a couple to do? I have a few ideas, but first, how many couples don’t regularly sleep together? Turns out, it’s a pretty big number. The National Sleep Foundation did a national survey in 2001 and again in 2005, and found that the number of married folks who reported not regularly sleeping in the same bed as their mate jumped from 12% to 23%. If that finding is totally solid, it’s an amazing change in such a basic pattern in life. It suggests that people truly are having more sleep problems than before, and some are resorting to sleeping alone to deal with it.
Of course, some couples who are not sleeping together are probably doing so because of not getting along well together. That would be nothing new, though, and couldn’t account for the increase. Still, it’s worth pointing out that some couples sleep apart because they just want to be apart. When I was little, growing up in Kettering Ohio, there was a time when this cranky couple lived next to us. I knew that this couple had separate bedrooms. I don’t remember how I know this, because I can’t recall ever being in their home, but I did know this and I remember thinking that it was odd. But I also remember how regularly this woman yelled at one of my brothers, who, I would add, was gifted at getting her riled up. She also sneered a great deal at all of us. She was not a happy person but she was gifted at sneering. I’m not sure what was up with her, but I don’t think she was happy, nor do I think they were happy as a couple. Having separate bedrooms might have been part of the only way that their marriage could work. (One day, they were gone. We were on vacation when they moved out, and all of a sudden, a perfectly lovely and delightful, non-sneering family had moved in. Happy days.)
Back to couples and problems with sleep. What are the problems that couples who are otherwise doing fine have with sleep? There are three I’ve been thinking a lot about: tension, motion, and snoring. The way I’m using the term here, “tension” is the one that’s most related to the research my colleagues (especially Howard Markman) and I have done over the years on how couples communicate and handle conflict. What I’m talking about here is tension between partners. Sleep is something that happens best when you are relaxed and not being stimulated (well, not stimulated in a stimulating way; a great massage might help you sleep and it’s obviously a kind of stimulation). When two partners are upset with each other, they are less likely to fall asleep as quickly and sleep as soundly.
Vicious cycle time: Research shows that when people don’t sleep well on a given night, they are more irritable and negative with their partner the next day. So poor sleep leads to more negatives between partners. The bummer is that those increased negatives also make it harder to sleep the next night.
To summarize: Tension bad. Sleep good. Tension makes sleep bad. Bad sleep means more tension. Bad spiral to get into and hard spiral to get out of.
It’s very clear that sleep is related to everything about personal health and wellbeing. If you are not sleeping well, everything else in life will suffer. Everything else in life includes your marriage. There is a lot at stake with sleep problems.
Here’s some simple advice. It’s like everything else that we (my colleagues and I) recommend in our books. Take control of your conflicts and don’t let them control you. How do you take control of how conflict and tension affects your sleep? You need to decide on a plan that can help both of you to sleep better, and then stick to it. Take charge and don’t let things slide if your sleep is suffering.
Agree not to talk about issues, conflicts, or problems within two hours of the time you should be falling asleep. Just don’t let stuff come up then, and when it does, get it back on the shelf quickly. Get good at not sliding into that mode near bedtime. That also means you need to find other times to have these talks, when you are at your best, and can work together as well as possible. Otherwise, you’re just asking for these issues to come up when you happen to be together, as you near time to sleep. Sometimes sleeping well together isn’t something you can accomplish lying down.
*
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sleeping Together
Okay, sorry to mislead you—not! I bet you thought this posting would be about sex, also, like the last one. It’s not. It’s actually about sleeping. You know, like being asleep through the night and all. I’m going to look at the issue of sleeping together, but not in THAT way. This is the first of several entries I make on the subject of sleep. Over the past couple of years, my colleagues and I (especially Howard Markman) have become very interested in the subject of sleep and how it affects individuals and couples. Speaking for myself, that could be because I’ve had a harder time sleeping well in the past few years.
Apparently, problems sleeping are nearly a national epidemic. In fact, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) just released the results of a huge study (based on surveying 400,000 people in the U.S.) on sleep. Overall, they estimate that about 1 in 10 people have a serious sleep problem. One of the headlines from their report is that people on the East coast (especially West Virginia) have the highest number of sleep problems and people on the West Coast have the lowest number. Remember, with research, it’s always on average. Some people in New York City, no doubt, sleep like babies and some people in California have not slept well for years and years (certainly, you’d think people in charge of the state budget there are not sleeping too well).
I have a theory. I think people on the East coast don’t sleep as well because they have to get up so much earlier than everyone else, and especially those of us out West. You know, the sun gets there a whole lot earlier than it gets to us here in Colorado; and it gets later still to the West coast. I’d hate to have the sun coming up so early every day!
Now, back to the idea of sleeping together. (Hold it a second. I hope you figured out a moment ago that there is a flaw in my reasoning about the East coast. Egads. Did some of you think I was that stupid? Or worse, did my logic about the East coast make sense to you? If so, you really ought to work on not trusting everything you read.)
Now, for some really interesting research. A sleep researcher named Dr. Neil Stanley (no relation), in England, recently caused quite a stir by recommending that people would sleep a lot better if they slept alone—as in, not sleeping with their mate. You can read more about what he said, here, courtesy of the BBC. His main point is that all kinds of sleep problems are compounded by sleeping together. Since I’ve been studying sleep issues with couples, I have come to believe that he is correct, and he is backed up by numerous solid studies on sleep. A number of studies show that behaviors of one partner will negatively affect the other’s sleep, especially things like snoring and tossing and turning.
While I believe this other Dr. Stanley is correct in the basics, I’m not buying into the idea that most partners should sleep apart. Most people aren’t going to follow his advice. It is true that sleep problems are compounded between partners, and women are particularly affected by this. A lot of the sleep problems women have are related to snoring or restless husbands (actually, it’s more often the wife who is “restless”). Men snore more and that makes it harder for women to sleep well.
Here’s a really interesting fact. People think they sleep better when sleeping with their partner, but it’s not true based on some pretty strong studies. If you go to the BBC link earlier, note the comment by Dr. Robert Meadows near the end of the article. I’ve looked at the studies that back this point up, and they are impressive.
Where does that leave sleeping together? It’s complicated. People think they sleep better sleeping together, but many don’t. Sleep problems like snoring, or having one partner toss and turn a lot, makes these dynamics much more of a concern. Women, especially, value sleeping with their man in terms of emotional comfort, but studies also show that women pay the greater price in terms of their own sleep quality. (Remember, “on average” okay?)
I’ve been doing something particularly fun this year. I’ve been consulting for the mattress company, Tempur-Pedic, about sleep issues with couples. I’ve enjoyed this immensely. Their interest in having me give them input was perfectly timed with my own growing interest in the topic of sleep and how it affects couples. Given my growing interests, and my consulting role for Tempu-Pedic (paid, by the way), I’ve been thinking a lot about simple things couples can do to improve their quality of sleep. I’ll share some of those things in the next post or two.
Sweet dreams. (I better expand that a tad: May you have wonderful dreams that you are perfectly unaware of. Research (at least as of some years ago) shows that we only remember dreams if we wake up during them. If you regularly have vivid, clearly remembered dreams, it probably means you are waking up a lot, not that you are dreaming more than anyone else.)
*
Apparently, problems sleeping are nearly a national epidemic. In fact, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) just released the results of a huge study (based on surveying 400,000 people in the U.S.) on sleep. Overall, they estimate that about 1 in 10 people have a serious sleep problem. One of the headlines from their report is that people on the East coast (especially West Virginia) have the highest number of sleep problems and people on the West Coast have the lowest number. Remember, with research, it’s always on average. Some people in New York City, no doubt, sleep like babies and some people in California have not slept well for years and years (certainly, you’d think people in charge of the state budget there are not sleeping too well).
I have a theory. I think people on the East coast don’t sleep as well because they have to get up so much earlier than everyone else, and especially those of us out West. You know, the sun gets there a whole lot earlier than it gets to us here in Colorado; and it gets later still to the West coast. I’d hate to have the sun coming up so early every day!
Now, back to the idea of sleeping together. (Hold it a second. I hope you figured out a moment ago that there is a flaw in my reasoning about the East coast. Egads. Did some of you think I was that stupid? Or worse, did my logic about the East coast make sense to you? If so, you really ought to work on not trusting everything you read.)
Now, for some really interesting research. A sleep researcher named Dr. Neil Stanley (no relation), in England, recently caused quite a stir by recommending that people would sleep a lot better if they slept alone—as in, not sleeping with their mate. You can read more about what he said, here, courtesy of the BBC. His main point is that all kinds of sleep problems are compounded by sleeping together. Since I’ve been studying sleep issues with couples, I have come to believe that he is correct, and he is backed up by numerous solid studies on sleep. A number of studies show that behaviors of one partner will negatively affect the other’s sleep, especially things like snoring and tossing and turning.
While I believe this other Dr. Stanley is correct in the basics, I’m not buying into the idea that most partners should sleep apart. Most people aren’t going to follow his advice. It is true that sleep problems are compounded between partners, and women are particularly affected by this. A lot of the sleep problems women have are related to snoring or restless husbands (actually, it’s more often the wife who is “restless”). Men snore more and that makes it harder for women to sleep well.
Here’s a really interesting fact. People think they sleep better when sleeping with their partner, but it’s not true based on some pretty strong studies. If you go to the BBC link earlier, note the comment by Dr. Robert Meadows near the end of the article. I’ve looked at the studies that back this point up, and they are impressive.
Where does that leave sleeping together? It’s complicated. People think they sleep better sleeping together, but many don’t. Sleep problems like snoring, or having one partner toss and turn a lot, makes these dynamics much more of a concern. Women, especially, value sleeping with their man in terms of emotional comfort, but studies also show that women pay the greater price in terms of their own sleep quality. (Remember, “on average” okay?)
I’ve been doing something particularly fun this year. I’ve been consulting for the mattress company, Tempur-Pedic, about sleep issues with couples. I’ve enjoyed this immensely. Their interest in having me give them input was perfectly timed with my own growing interest in the topic of sleep and how it affects couples. Given my growing interests, and my consulting role for Tempu-Pedic (paid, by the way), I’ve been thinking a lot about simple things couples can do to improve their quality of sleep. I’ll share some of those things in the next post or two.
Sweet dreams. (I better expand that a tad: May you have wonderful dreams that you are perfectly unaware of. Research (at least as of some years ago) shows that we only remember dreams if we wake up during them. If you regularly have vivid, clearly remembered dreams, it probably means you are waking up a lot, not that you are dreaming more than anyone else.)
*
Saturday, October 17, 2009
What’s My Line?
Ever think about sex? I have and I bet you have. In fact, while I don’t fathom how researchers can accurately study such a thing, it seems widely believed that people think about sex a lot. Add a sex-charged culture, and I don’t see how anyone avoids thinking about something related to the subject fairly often. In this post, I’m writing about sex and pre-commitments. The last two posts have been about the concept of pre-commitments and their effects on behavior. Recall that pre-commitment means this: Deciding ahead of time—before a situation or circumstance—what you intend to do. Research shows that pre-commitments make it more likely that we will do what we intended to do when the time comes.
Two posts ago, I mentioned a book that I think is pretty fascinating, called Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon page for that book.) Ariely covers many interesting topics. His specialty is analyzing how people behave under various conditions. I highly recommend the book with a word of caution. Since I know that some portion of my readers of this blog tend to have more traditionally religious values, it’s worth noting that some of his experiments are, shall we say, something you likely would not yourself conduct or participate in, such as the one I’m going to focus on today. The results, however, are important, and I am going to talk about his study on sexual arousal.
He conducted this study with male college students. He advertised for volunteers on the campus in this way: “Wanted: Male research participants, heterosexual, 18 years-plus, for a study on decision making and arousal.”
He first got the young men’s opinions on questions like this (and many more):
Q: Could having sex with someone he hated be enjoyable?
Q: Would he tell a woman that he loved her to increase the chance that she would have sex with him?
Q: Would he encourage a date to drink to increase the chance that she would have sex with him?
Q: Would he keep trying to have sex after a date had said “no”?
Q: Would he use a condom even if he was afraid that a woman might change her mind while he went to get it?
These are just a sampling. Some of the questions were about what is arousing. Some questions were about how far the men would go to have sex with a woman. Some were about the subject of “safe sex.”
I’m going to skip over the methodology. Let’s just say that what Ariely did was get the opinions of the young men while there were not aroused, and then asked the questions again while they were in a state of high sexual arousal.
What did Ariely find? I will quote him:
“The results showed that when Roy and the other participants were in a cold, rational, superego-driven state, they respected women; they were not particularly attracted to the odd sexual activities we asked them about; they always took the moral high ground; and they expected that they would always use a condom.”
“In every case, the participants in our experiment got it wrong. Even the most brilliant and rational person, in the heat of passion, seems to be absolutely and completely divorced from the person he thought he was.”
Essentially, the values and predictions about what the young men would do or where they would draw lines sexually changed dramatically from non-aroused “cold state” when in an aroused, “hot state.”
By the way, while this study is on college males, it’s undoubtedly just as valid a result for college females—in fact, for people, period. It’s just that this particular study was more likely to be something you could get college males to do.
In this study, Ariely shows how much—and it’s a lot—a person’s beliefs and values can change when sexually aroused. Beliefs and values do not perfectly predict behavior, partly exactly because of phenomena like what Ariely was studying. The context one is in greatly affects behavior, and apparently, beliefs and values as well. That’s why part of being who you want to be in life is related to choosing who you hang around and where you put yourself. If that sounds a lot like situational ethics, it is because it is related. While many people do not like this notion, the fact is this: A gazillion (a really big number) of well designed experiments show that context greatly affects what people will actually do. Maybe I’ll do a whole blog on that. I should, and depending on circumstances, I will.
Does all this mean that one’s values and ethics do not matter? Not at all. Your values and beliefs are the starting point of what you bring into a situation. Let’s use that nifty notion of “sliding vs. deciding” again. Unless you are different from almost everyone else (this is not likely, I hope you realize), your values are like a set point from which you may slide given the circumstances you are in. I am suggesting—and I hope this does not offend any of you—that people do slide at times, and so do you.
Taking the idea of pre-commitment full circle, the question is this: where do you want to plant flags about how you will behave in certain circumstances? I think it’s fair to say that without planting any flags at all, one’s behavior will be much more determined by circumstance alone than anything else. There is nothing else if there are no flags planted. Planting flags is like deciding what territory you want to defend so that, if pressures do push you to slide, you know where you are at and where you might start to slide from. With flags, you know what you are trying to work toward when circumstances are bearing down on you—including your own emotional or sexual arousal.
This is all another way of asking the question, “What’s my line?” Especially for those in the dating mate-searching scene, where do you want your line to be about things such as sex? You’ll be tempted to slide from your line, but deciding ahead of time that you have a line that you are making a commitment to makes it a lot more likely that you’ll be able to hang around where you planted your flag.
*
Two posts ago, I mentioned a book that I think is pretty fascinating, called Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon page for that book.) Ariely covers many interesting topics. His specialty is analyzing how people behave under various conditions. I highly recommend the book with a word of caution. Since I know that some portion of my readers of this blog tend to have more traditionally religious values, it’s worth noting that some of his experiments are, shall we say, something you likely would not yourself conduct or participate in, such as the one I’m going to focus on today. The results, however, are important, and I am going to talk about his study on sexual arousal.
He conducted this study with male college students. He advertised for volunteers on the campus in this way: “Wanted: Male research participants, heterosexual, 18 years-plus, for a study on decision making and arousal.”
He first got the young men’s opinions on questions like this (and many more):
Q: Could having sex with someone he hated be enjoyable?
Q: Would he tell a woman that he loved her to increase the chance that she would have sex with him?
Q: Would he encourage a date to drink to increase the chance that she would have sex with him?
Q: Would he keep trying to have sex after a date had said “no”?
Q: Would he use a condom even if he was afraid that a woman might change her mind while he went to get it?
These are just a sampling. Some of the questions were about what is arousing. Some questions were about how far the men would go to have sex with a woman. Some were about the subject of “safe sex.”
I’m going to skip over the methodology. Let’s just say that what Ariely did was get the opinions of the young men while there were not aroused, and then asked the questions again while they were in a state of high sexual arousal.
What did Ariely find? I will quote him:
“The results showed that when Roy and the other participants were in a cold, rational, superego-driven state, they respected women; they were not particularly attracted to the odd sexual activities we asked them about; they always took the moral high ground; and they expected that they would always use a condom.”
“In every case, the participants in our experiment got it wrong. Even the most brilliant and rational person, in the heat of passion, seems to be absolutely and completely divorced from the person he thought he was.”
Essentially, the values and predictions about what the young men would do or where they would draw lines sexually changed dramatically from non-aroused “cold state” when in an aroused, “hot state.”
By the way, while this study is on college males, it’s undoubtedly just as valid a result for college females—in fact, for people, period. It’s just that this particular study was more likely to be something you could get college males to do.
In this study, Ariely shows how much—and it’s a lot—a person’s beliefs and values can change when sexually aroused. Beliefs and values do not perfectly predict behavior, partly exactly because of phenomena like what Ariely was studying. The context one is in greatly affects behavior, and apparently, beliefs and values as well. That’s why part of being who you want to be in life is related to choosing who you hang around and where you put yourself. If that sounds a lot like situational ethics, it is because it is related. While many people do not like this notion, the fact is this: A gazillion (a really big number) of well designed experiments show that context greatly affects what people will actually do. Maybe I’ll do a whole blog on that. I should, and depending on circumstances, I will.
Does all this mean that one’s values and ethics do not matter? Not at all. Your values and beliefs are the starting point of what you bring into a situation. Let’s use that nifty notion of “sliding vs. deciding” again. Unless you are different from almost everyone else (this is not likely, I hope you realize), your values are like a set point from which you may slide given the circumstances you are in. I am suggesting—and I hope this does not offend any of you—that people do slide at times, and so do you.
Taking the idea of pre-commitment full circle, the question is this: where do you want to plant flags about how you will behave in certain circumstances? I think it’s fair to say that without planting any flags at all, one’s behavior will be much more determined by circumstance alone than anything else. There is nothing else if there are no flags planted. Planting flags is like deciding what territory you want to defend so that, if pressures do push you to slide, you know where you are at and where you might start to slide from. With flags, you know what you are trying to work toward when circumstances are bearing down on you—including your own emotional or sexual arousal.
This is all another way of asking the question, “What’s my line?” Especially for those in the dating mate-searching scene, where do you want your line to be about things such as sex? You’ll be tempted to slide from your line, but deciding ahead of time that you have a line that you are making a commitment to makes it a lot more likely that you’ll be able to hang around where you planted your flag.
*
Thursday, October 8, 2009
WHATEVER is annoying
Just a quick little fun note. I read this article today. Apparently, "whatever" is the most annoying phrase in America. See the article here in USA Today: 'Whatever' is, you know, annoying, but 'it is what it is'
Looks like letting WHATEVER happen to you is not only unwise to do, it's unwise to even say!
*
Looks like letting WHATEVER happen to you is not only unwise to do, it's unwise to even say!
*
Monday, October 5, 2009
WHATEVER
In my last post, I described the idea of pre-commitment. Now let’s apply it to relationships. Quick recap: A pre-commitment is deciding ahead of time—before a situation or circumstance—what you intend to do. Research shows that pre-commitments make it more likely that we will do what we intended to do when the time comes. Of course, pre-commitments don’t protect us completely from temptation to stray from the plan, and not all plans should be kept.
How effective are pre-commitments? It probably depends on scads of things, including the area of pre-commitment. Some things are harder to stick to than others. What kinds of things are hard for you to stick with in day-to-day life?
While not any panacea, it should be kind of obvious that deciding what you intend to do makes it more likely that you will do what you intend and not slide into whatever.
The opposite of pre-committing is letting WHATEVER happen. WHATEVER can be all kinds of things. WHATEVER can be good, but at important times in life, WHATEVER can be bad. A lot depends on if a lot is at stake. There is nothing wrong with sliding into WHATEVER if nothing WHATSOEVER is at stake.
Okay, time to work. You, I mean, not me. I’m going to be done working after I finish this. I’m going to assume that you, the reader, are in one of two categories:
Category One: You are a single or a sort-of-single. Either way, you are not done looking around for the person you might want to be with for the rest of your life.
Category Two: You in a committed relationship, and that means are not looking around because you have committed to someone (most likely, in marriage). Of course, you could be looking around, but that’s another story.
You category two types can get something out of pondering these questions in your relationship. However, I’m going to focus in on category one folks today.
Here are some steps you can take to up your pre-commitment game.
1. Think about the WHATEVERS that can happen in your love life that you might like to avoid.
2. Think about what you would like to have happen instead of various WHATEVERS. In other words, what is the anti-WHATEVER?
3. What pre-commitments could you make that would make it more likely that the best things would happen?
Here is one example. Sarah wants love in her life. She’s not been in a relationship for some time and she is feeling lonely. She has had serious relationships that, ultimately, didn’t go where she wanted them to go. Sarah happens to have a strong faith tradition and belief; however, she has not thought much about the beliefs that she wants or needs her future mate to hold, when she gets to the “to have and to hold” part she seeks. (I’m just picking one particularly important area of compatibility for Sarah, but you could apply this point to any number of things, including hobbies, looks, values, life motivation, beliefs about being green, etc.) Since she has no pre-commitment to herself about what she should hold out for, she’s looking for love in WHATEVER places she happens to be. She’s not guided by a pre-commitment to what she should see in a person before falling in love.
You could think about what pre-commitment means to someone like Sarah in terms of setting boundaries. These boundaries could be her minimum standards for a mate in areas like values, drive, or intentions about having children (or not). In her dating life, she could set boundaries about things like her romantic and sexual behavior. Where will she draw the line? Does she want there to be a line? Anywhere? I know it may sound quaint but people can decide who they are and what they will do, and not just let WHATEVER happen.
Yes, I’m talking about mate selection, again. I talk about that subject a lot because people have a lot of options—or at least some options—about where they will end up in their love lives. And people have the greatest number of options before they get settled on one path with a specific partner.
If you are seriously seeking someone, at sometime, what are some of the pre-commitments that you could make that would help you find lasting love? If you decide on some pre-commitments, are you willing to write them down? Do you have a good friend that you could tell them to—someone who’s willing to encourage you to stick to what you think is important?
Without deciding otherwise, WHATEVER will be will be.
Que sera sera, Sarah.
*
How effective are pre-commitments? It probably depends on scads of things, including the area of pre-commitment. Some things are harder to stick to than others. What kinds of things are hard for you to stick with in day-to-day life?
While not any panacea, it should be kind of obvious that deciding what you intend to do makes it more likely that you will do what you intend and not slide into whatever.
The opposite of pre-committing is letting WHATEVER happen. WHATEVER can be all kinds of things. WHATEVER can be good, but at important times in life, WHATEVER can be bad. A lot depends on if a lot is at stake. There is nothing wrong with sliding into WHATEVER if nothing WHATSOEVER is at stake.
Okay, time to work. You, I mean, not me. I’m going to be done working after I finish this. I’m going to assume that you, the reader, are in one of two categories:
Category One: You are a single or a sort-of-single. Either way, you are not done looking around for the person you might want to be with for the rest of your life.
Category Two: You in a committed relationship, and that means are not looking around because you have committed to someone (most likely, in marriage). Of course, you could be looking around, but that’s another story.
You category two types can get something out of pondering these questions in your relationship. However, I’m going to focus in on category one folks today.
Here are some steps you can take to up your pre-commitment game.
1. Think about the WHATEVERS that can happen in your love life that you might like to avoid.
2. Think about what you would like to have happen instead of various WHATEVERS. In other words, what is the anti-WHATEVER?
3. What pre-commitments could you make that would make it more likely that the best things would happen?
Here is one example. Sarah wants love in her life. She’s not been in a relationship for some time and she is feeling lonely. She has had serious relationships that, ultimately, didn’t go where she wanted them to go. Sarah happens to have a strong faith tradition and belief; however, she has not thought much about the beliefs that she wants or needs her future mate to hold, when she gets to the “to have and to hold” part she seeks. (I’m just picking one particularly important area of compatibility for Sarah, but you could apply this point to any number of things, including hobbies, looks, values, life motivation, beliefs about being green, etc.) Since she has no pre-commitment to herself about what she should hold out for, she’s looking for love in WHATEVER places she happens to be. She’s not guided by a pre-commitment to what she should see in a person before falling in love.
You could think about what pre-commitment means to someone like Sarah in terms of setting boundaries. These boundaries could be her minimum standards for a mate in areas like values, drive, or intentions about having children (or not). In her dating life, she could set boundaries about things like her romantic and sexual behavior. Where will she draw the line? Does she want there to be a line? Anywhere? I know it may sound quaint but people can decide who they are and what they will do, and not just let WHATEVER happen.
Yes, I’m talking about mate selection, again. I talk about that subject a lot because people have a lot of options—or at least some options—about where they will end up in their love lives. And people have the greatest number of options before they get settled on one path with a specific partner.
If you are seriously seeking someone, at sometime, what are some of the pre-commitments that you could make that would help you find lasting love? If you decide on some pre-commitments, are you willing to write them down? Do you have a good friend that you could tell them to—someone who’s willing to encourage you to stick to what you think is important?
Without deciding otherwise, WHATEVER will be will be.
Que sera sera, Sarah.
*
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Eat and Drink What You Want: The Pre-Commitment Diet
I have an idea for a new diet. I won’t sell any books about it, though, because it’s not really about cutting calories or losing weight. And it’s bad marketing to announce that your diet does not help you lose weight. This diet is most relevant to times when you are eating out with friends or business acquaintances. The pre-commitment diet is about increasing your odds of eating what you want most and drinking what you want, when you are out with others. Of course, I’m not really interested in meals out, beer, or diets, in this blog. It’s about relationships. Here, I’m laying down some principles for upcoming posts.
I like to mention books that I have enjoyed or found interesting. Another of the books I’ve liked a lot in the past year is one by a behavioral economist named Dan Ariely. The book is called Predictably Irrational (the title is a link if you are interested). Ariely’s specialty is examining the ways in which people do not behave quite rationally in all kinds of situations. One of the very interesting things about Ariely’s work is that he devises inventive ways to test various ideas and theories. His book is really a series of descriptions of these interesting experiments, followed by discussion of the principles they highlight and what it may mean to the reader. I will cover one of his studies here that happens to be based on beer. I’ll expand the application for relationships of this study on beer in the next post. After that, I’ll write about one of his studies that is focused on sex.
(By the way, I am not unaware of the probability that blogs that contain the words “diet,” “beer,” and “sex” are likely to draw some attention. In fact, maybe someone reading will have gotten here by Googling those three words at the same time. As you’ll see, beer is not really my focus, but I do want to describe his experiment and it is about beer.)
Ariely’s beer experiment was focused on the orders people made in a pub near MIT (Ariely worked at MIT at the time, not the pub). He and his colleague were allowed to run this experiment in this pub. The idea was pretty simple. He was testing the idea that, when in a group, the beer orders the first people to order make affect the beer orders others, who follow, will make. I don’t mean people across the bar, but people in the same group. So, imagine a setting where persons A, B, C, D, & E are out relaxing, and they are all going to order a beer. To make things simple, let’s assume they are going to order their beers in alphabetical order, so person A is up first.
What did Ariely find? The first person in the group who orders a beer is the one most likely to get the beer she wanted and to like the beer she got. How can this be? We’ll, it turns out that in social settings, like this pub setting with college students, that people like to be unique and special. If person D wanted beer X, but persons A & C already ordered beer X, person D will feel some pressure to be unique and cool, and get a different beer even though he wanted beer X. Being unique and cool is not always groovy. Person A, having no one going before her, gets the beer she really wanted all along because she’s not affected by anyone else’s order.
(By the way, again: It’s studies like this that make me completely mistrust focus groups as ways of gathering information. Unless the setting is just right and the interviewer super skilled, how can what the first people say not affect the validity of what others who follow will say? Are you getting the real opinion of those who speak after several others have spoken? I bet not. This is also pretty good confirmation of the importance of secret ballots.)
Okay, application time: Ariely found that if you had persons A, B, C, D, & E each write down their order on paper, privately, everyone would get the beer they wanted most and would report being more satisfied. This is where the term “pre-commitment” comes in. By pre-commitment, I’m not talking about what builds up to commitment. I’m talking about pre-committing yourself to what you want—or what you think you should do—BEFORE you are in a situation where the circumstances and people might sway you to do, or choose, something other than what you really want or really think you should do.
The pre-commitment diet I have in mind is about deciding ahead of the time that others place their orders what you want and then sticking to it. So, my pre-commitment diet is mostly about getting what you want when you order, not about losing weight. But, if could lead to weight loss if your pre-commitment was about what you were going to order because it had fewer calories.
There is great power in deciding ahead of time what you are about and what you mean to do. Otherwise, the situation or social pressure might lead you to slide into something other than what you wanted to have happen in the first place.
Next time, I’ll focus on that principle when it comes to relationships. And after that, we’ll get to sex. I’m pre-committing to write about that.
*
I like to mention books that I have enjoyed or found interesting. Another of the books I’ve liked a lot in the past year is one by a behavioral economist named Dan Ariely. The book is called Predictably Irrational (the title is a link if you are interested). Ariely’s specialty is examining the ways in which people do not behave quite rationally in all kinds of situations. One of the very interesting things about Ariely’s work is that he devises inventive ways to test various ideas and theories. His book is really a series of descriptions of these interesting experiments, followed by discussion of the principles they highlight and what it may mean to the reader. I will cover one of his studies here that happens to be based on beer. I’ll expand the application for relationships of this study on beer in the next post. After that, I’ll write about one of his studies that is focused on sex.
(By the way, I am not unaware of the probability that blogs that contain the words “diet,” “beer,” and “sex” are likely to draw some attention. In fact, maybe someone reading will have gotten here by Googling those three words at the same time. As you’ll see, beer is not really my focus, but I do want to describe his experiment and it is about beer.)
Ariely’s beer experiment was focused on the orders people made in a pub near MIT (Ariely worked at MIT at the time, not the pub). He and his colleague were allowed to run this experiment in this pub. The idea was pretty simple. He was testing the idea that, when in a group, the beer orders the first people to order make affect the beer orders others, who follow, will make. I don’t mean people across the bar, but people in the same group. So, imagine a setting where persons A, B, C, D, & E are out relaxing, and they are all going to order a beer. To make things simple, let’s assume they are going to order their beers in alphabetical order, so person A is up first.
What did Ariely find? The first person in the group who orders a beer is the one most likely to get the beer she wanted and to like the beer she got. How can this be? We’ll, it turns out that in social settings, like this pub setting with college students, that people like to be unique and special. If person D wanted beer X, but persons A & C already ordered beer X, person D will feel some pressure to be unique and cool, and get a different beer even though he wanted beer X. Being unique and cool is not always groovy. Person A, having no one going before her, gets the beer she really wanted all along because she’s not affected by anyone else’s order.
(By the way, again: It’s studies like this that make me completely mistrust focus groups as ways of gathering information. Unless the setting is just right and the interviewer super skilled, how can what the first people say not affect the validity of what others who follow will say? Are you getting the real opinion of those who speak after several others have spoken? I bet not. This is also pretty good confirmation of the importance of secret ballots.)
Okay, application time: Ariely found that if you had persons A, B, C, D, & E each write down their order on paper, privately, everyone would get the beer they wanted most and would report being more satisfied. This is where the term “pre-commitment” comes in. By pre-commitment, I’m not talking about what builds up to commitment. I’m talking about pre-committing yourself to what you want—or what you think you should do—BEFORE you are in a situation where the circumstances and people might sway you to do, or choose, something other than what you really want or really think you should do.
The pre-commitment diet I have in mind is about deciding ahead of the time that others place their orders what you want and then sticking to it. So, my pre-commitment diet is mostly about getting what you want when you order, not about losing weight. But, if could lead to weight loss if your pre-commitment was about what you were going to order because it had fewer calories.
There is great power in deciding ahead of time what you are about and what you mean to do. Otherwise, the situation or social pressure might lead you to slide into something other than what you wanted to have happen in the first place.
Next time, I’ll focus on that principle when it comes to relationships. And after that, we’ll get to sex. I’m pre-committing to write about that.
*
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Interest in Everyone is Interesting to No One
Here’s a research nugget that rings true. Using speed dating methods, Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel of Northwestern University found that people who convey romantic interest in nearly anyone who is attractive to them end up with fewer people finding them attractive. The lesson? Potential objects of your affection will be less interested when they detect that you are not too choosey.
Put simply, people are able to detect when a person is non-discriminating. And this happens fast, since the phenomena can be measured in speed-dating.
If you are looking for love, hopefully you are looking for someone special, not just any person who will do. Being choosey is not only going to make it more likely you find a partner who fits you in important ways, it will also make you more attractive to this person when you find him or her.
Here’s a very practical tip if you are trying out speed dating in your search for lasting love. Leave your Crosby, Stills and Nash t-shirt that says “love the one you’re with” at home.
*
Put simply, people are able to detect when a person is non-discriminating. And this happens fast, since the phenomena can be measured in speed-dating.
If you are looking for love, hopefully you are looking for someone special, not just any person who will do. Being choosey is not only going to make it more likely you find a partner who fits you in important ways, it will also make you more attractive to this person when you find him or her.
Here’s a very practical tip if you are trying out speed dating in your search for lasting love. Leave your Crosby, Stills and Nash t-shirt that says “love the one you’re with” at home.
*
Friday, September 11, 2009
Churning
I’m returning, briefly, to the subject of the endowment effect. If you want more background before I get to a new point, see the two blog entries below by just searching “endowment” and you’ll get right to them. Then, come back here for the latest thought.
I’m re-reading Tim Harford’s book, The Logic of Life. As I mentioned in an earlier blog (Stuck on You), I really like this book a lot. In the earlier sections of the book, he covers issues directly related to the theme of this blog about relationships and commitment. He covers things like reasons for the greatly increased practice of oral sex among teens. And it, depressingly, makes a lot of sense. He also covers phenomena such as the way the partnering options are affected by how many people exist in your community who you’d be interested in versus how many other people like you are interested in those same people: for example, how it skews things when you live in a city where there are many more single females versus males. Numbers affect things.
Early on in the book, Harford covers some research on the endowment effect that I had missed before. While there is tons of evidence that the endowment effect operates on all of us, it affects people the least who have the most experience buying/selling/trading in that market. He cites a study where a researcher named List did a study at a Pin swap meet. Apparently, there are enough people around who are very interested in all manner of pins (you know, like what you might pick up when you travel to Niagra Falls to commemorate your experience) that there are who swap meets among collectors. In this study Harford cites, the researcher did the classic type of endowment effect study—he gave people something they did not already have and then examined how much it would take to get them to part with it. Here is the bottom line. People who were very experienced pin traders were much more willing to part with the pin they just received in exchange for another. They had become less rapidly attached to the pin they just received than others who had less experience. In essence, the experienced people did not overvalue a new pin just because one was just given to them.
Relationship application time. I’ve seen this illustration used before where someone will liken the way people attach to romantic partners to duct tape. Crude, yes; relative, also yes. Imagine someone taking two pieces of duct tape and sticking them together (sticky sides together) and pulling them apart, over and over and over again. You’d not be surprised that the tape becomes less sticky overtime. The stickiness wears out. Now, think romantic relationships. There are a number of scholars (and others) who believe that having a great many romantic relationships might wear down one’s ability to attach. If I apply this point about the endowment effect above, I get this theory. People who have had a lot of romantic (and sexual) partners may be at greater risk of coming to a point where they do not overvalue the person they are with now. That makes sense and may not be as big of a deal if one is still searching for a solid match of a partner.
Imagine how this might affect someone once they have found “the one,” the person they want to spend the rest of their time with. I’m all for thinking realistically in relationships, but only to a point. There might be something pretty valuable in being able to consistently overvalue your mate: to think they are the best thing since sliced bread and you’d not trade them for anyone. It could be that churning through too many romantic partners earlier in life might make it harder to have that way of seeing one’s mate that may help keep commitment strong.
Maybe staying sticky is a pretty good reason to go slower and more carefully in how one approaches the dating and mating part of life.
*
I’m re-reading Tim Harford’s book, The Logic of Life. As I mentioned in an earlier blog (Stuck on You), I really like this book a lot. In the earlier sections of the book, he covers issues directly related to the theme of this blog about relationships and commitment. He covers things like reasons for the greatly increased practice of oral sex among teens. And it, depressingly, makes a lot of sense. He also covers phenomena such as the way the partnering options are affected by how many people exist in your community who you’d be interested in versus how many other people like you are interested in those same people: for example, how it skews things when you live in a city where there are many more single females versus males. Numbers affect things.
Early on in the book, Harford covers some research on the endowment effect that I had missed before. While there is tons of evidence that the endowment effect operates on all of us, it affects people the least who have the most experience buying/selling/trading in that market. He cites a study where a researcher named List did a study at a Pin swap meet. Apparently, there are enough people around who are very interested in all manner of pins (you know, like what you might pick up when you travel to Niagra Falls to commemorate your experience) that there are who swap meets among collectors. In this study Harford cites, the researcher did the classic type of endowment effect study—he gave people something they did not already have and then examined how much it would take to get them to part with it. Here is the bottom line. People who were very experienced pin traders were much more willing to part with the pin they just received in exchange for another. They had become less rapidly attached to the pin they just received than others who had less experience. In essence, the experienced people did not overvalue a new pin just because one was just given to them.
Relationship application time. I’ve seen this illustration used before where someone will liken the way people attach to romantic partners to duct tape. Crude, yes; relative, also yes. Imagine someone taking two pieces of duct tape and sticking them together (sticky sides together) and pulling them apart, over and over and over again. You’d not be surprised that the tape becomes less sticky overtime. The stickiness wears out. Now, think romantic relationships. There are a number of scholars (and others) who believe that having a great many romantic relationships might wear down one’s ability to attach. If I apply this point about the endowment effect above, I get this theory. People who have had a lot of romantic (and sexual) partners may be at greater risk of coming to a point where they do not overvalue the person they are with now. That makes sense and may not be as big of a deal if one is still searching for a solid match of a partner.
Imagine how this might affect someone once they have found “the one,” the person they want to spend the rest of their time with. I’m all for thinking realistically in relationships, but only to a point. There might be something pretty valuable in being able to consistently overvalue your mate: to think they are the best thing since sliced bread and you’d not trade them for anyone. It could be that churning through too many romantic partners earlier in life might make it harder to have that way of seeing one’s mate that may help keep commitment strong.
Maybe staying sticky is a pretty good reason to go slower and more carefully in how one approaches the dating and mating part of life.
*
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Hand Held. Hand Played.
I am continuing on with some thoughts about gaming and doing well in life, especially in love life. Please see the last post before this one, if you have not already. This one will make a lot more sense if you do.
Everyone is dealt a hand in life. Here, I’m focusing on the hand you were dealt when it comes to succeeding in romantic relationships. A person’s hand is made up of many things that affect success and risk in romance. This is a very short list (there are many other things I could list):
- Family history (parents divorced, for example = more risk)
- Education and income (less = more risk)
- Looks (see blog entry below “what women want (and men too)”
- Disposition and personality tendencies (are you smooth or easily upset?)
- Past relationship history
- What city you live in terms of available partners
- Mental health history and issues
- Attachment security and insecurity (more insecure = more risk)
- Age (it’s complicated)
- Genetics (yes, the risk for divorce is partly genetic)
To some extent, you have little control about the hand that life dealt you. You have some control, however. For example, there are increased risks in marriage when a person has a lot of sexual partners prior to marriage. Presumably, one could decide not to do that and affect the hand they have to play later in life.
My point here is that whatever your hand, you will do better in life to play it and play it well. As I said in the last post, “give yourself a hand and don’t drop the ball.” Hope you got the play on words. Think like you have a hand to play in life and not like someone who’s just dropping a roulette ball and hoping that it lands on his or her number.
I’ve been reading a very interesting book called “The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life,” by Ben Sherwood. (The title is a link to it if you want to read more about it. It’s a bestseller.) Ben Sherwood covers a whole range of interesting stories about people who survived various things that most people do not, or would not, survive. He uses those stories to talk about the characteristics of survivors. He notes that, in some situations, you will not survive and there is nothing to do about it—nothing in your hand that it would matter to play. If you are on a plane falling from the sky, you have few or no cards to play. That’s in comparison, though, to a plane crashing while taking off, where many people do survive. As Sherwood describes, in that type of situation, what people do in a critical window of 90 seconds after the crash determines everything.
As Sherwood goes though the book, one of the things he attacks over and over again is passivity. He challenges the idea that there is nothing you can do to affect your chances in various situations because he believes (and research backs him up) that such a fatalistic view can get you killed when you don’t need to be dead. And I’m not talking about merely being undead, like many characters in my sons’ video games, but really alive.
In romantic relationships, playing your hand means taking an active role in what you do and why. It means deciding and not sliding so that you can do what you are able to do to improve your odds in life and love. That may also mean learning some things you don’t know already, like about what things make it more likely that relationships will succeed. Or, learning how to choose a partner wisely (see earlier post, “Looking for Love that Lasts,” as well). Or, if you are a couple trying to figure out if you got what it takes, taking a relationship education class together to see what you can learn and how well you cope together with learning. (For more information on relationship education, see websites such as www.PREPinc.com, www.loveyourrelationship.com, and www.smartmarriages.com.)
The key is realizing that what you do truly matters in how your life will turn out. That can make all the difference.
*
Everyone is dealt a hand in life. Here, I’m focusing on the hand you were dealt when it comes to succeeding in romantic relationships. A person’s hand is made up of many things that affect success and risk in romance. This is a very short list (there are many other things I could list):
- Family history (parents divorced, for example = more risk)
- Education and income (less = more risk)
- Looks (see blog entry below “what women want (and men too)”
- Disposition and personality tendencies (are you smooth or easily upset?)
- Past relationship history
- What city you live in terms of available partners
- Mental health history and issues
- Attachment security and insecurity (more insecure = more risk)
- Age (it’s complicated)
- Genetics (yes, the risk for divorce is partly genetic)
To some extent, you have little control about the hand that life dealt you. You have some control, however. For example, there are increased risks in marriage when a person has a lot of sexual partners prior to marriage. Presumably, one could decide not to do that and affect the hand they have to play later in life.
My point here is that whatever your hand, you will do better in life to play it and play it well. As I said in the last post, “give yourself a hand and don’t drop the ball.” Hope you got the play on words. Think like you have a hand to play in life and not like someone who’s just dropping a roulette ball and hoping that it lands on his or her number.
I’ve been reading a very interesting book called “The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life,” by Ben Sherwood. (The title is a link to it if you want to read more about it. It’s a bestseller.) Ben Sherwood covers a whole range of interesting stories about people who survived various things that most people do not, or would not, survive. He uses those stories to talk about the characteristics of survivors. He notes that, in some situations, you will not survive and there is nothing to do about it—nothing in your hand that it would matter to play. If you are on a plane falling from the sky, you have few or no cards to play. That’s in comparison, though, to a plane crashing while taking off, where many people do survive. As Sherwood describes, in that type of situation, what people do in a critical window of 90 seconds after the crash determines everything.
As Sherwood goes though the book, one of the things he attacks over and over again is passivity. He challenges the idea that there is nothing you can do to affect your chances in various situations because he believes (and research backs him up) that such a fatalistic view can get you killed when you don’t need to be dead. And I’m not talking about merely being undead, like many characters in my sons’ video games, but really alive.
In romantic relationships, playing your hand means taking an active role in what you do and why. It means deciding and not sliding so that you can do what you are able to do to improve your odds in life and love. That may also mean learning some things you don’t know already, like about what things make it more likely that relationships will succeed. Or, learning how to choose a partner wisely (see earlier post, “Looking for Love that Lasts,” as well). Or, if you are a couple trying to figure out if you got what it takes, taking a relationship education class together to see what you can learn and how well you cope together with learning. (For more information on relationship education, see websites such as www.PREPinc.com, www.loveyourrelationship.com, and www.smartmarriages.com.)
The key is realizing that what you do truly matters in how your life will turn out. That can make all the difference.
*
Monday, August 10, 2009
Black Jack or Roulette? You Choose.
I’m not a gambler. I don’t really enjoy it much and I’m not all that good at it, especially in games that involve bluffing (just ask my wife how good I am at hiding what I am really feeling). Part of my aversion to gambling is that I lost 20 bucks once playing poker with friends in 8th grade. Twenty bucks was a whole lot of money when I was in 8th grade. That’s a lot of pizzas or burgers. I was traumatized and decided not to play poker anymore with the guys. I didn’t give up my friends, I just gave up doing that with my friends.
Why am I writing about gambling? Simple. It’s a great metaphor for how people approach dating and mating.
I know people who like gambling from time-to-time. (I don’t know anyone who has anything like a gambling addiction—at least in so far as I am aware.) I am told by people who study these things that that the games you can play at a casino vary a great deal in terms of chance and skill. At the two ends of the spectrum are the roulette wheel and black jack. People who are skilled gamblers prefer a game like black jack to roulette because there is some skill involved with black jack. In fact, black jack is a game where your odds relative to the house’s odds are best. It’s not that they are ever as good as the house, mind you, which is why casinos make a great deal of money. Perhaps I should say “take” a great deal of money rather than make it. Roulette is pure chance. You put down a bet (of various kinds, like betting on black or red or a specific number). You drop the ball (or someone does) and round and round it goes, finally dropping down into a slot. You bet on red, and it drops in a red slot, and you win. It drops into black or green and you lose. (By the way, while most slots are red or black, there are a number of green slots which just does to demonstrate to you that your odds don’t even get to the level of 50-50, which is what the red and black bets lull you into believing. The house is not stupid.)
With roulette, you drop the ball and the ball is out of your hands. There is nothing you can adjust once you have placed your bet. You can’t up it, lower it, or get it back. You win or you lose. That’s what you can do. In contrast, black jack takes some skill. There are fairly well understood relative odds that change based on what cards you already have and what cards the dealer is showing. Disciplined black jack players know when the odds have moved against them (and do not bet more) and when the cards they can see suggest they should up their bet and either hold with the cards they have or take more. Good black jack players don’t go by feel, they understand the relative odds and where they have become most favorable, and they act on this.
How is this like relationships? People who are in the relationship market tend to be either playing black jack or roulette. People would be smarter to be playing black jack than roulette. Roulette people are letting things happen to them; they are sliding into relationships or situations and not making decisions. They are letting life happen to them rather than making the best decisions they can with the cards they have been dealt.
What’s the deal? Well, the deal is important. There is no illusion here (or in a casino) that everyone has equal odds of doing well. Some people have been dealt a worse hand than others. We can wish this were not true but, as they say, wishing does not make anything so. I would not go so far in calling this the luck of the draw, but that’s because I believe there is more meaning and purpose and order in our lives than it sometimes looks. But there are good hands and bad hands and in between hands. It’s worth thinking about what is in your hand. I’ll write more about this next time.
While some people do not have ideal options, I believe that everyone has choices. It may be most important of all for those with tougher hands to play to play as well as they can. Everyone can make decisions within the range of things that they control, and, within that range, the odds of doing well in life and love go up. That beats dumb luck. Dumb luck tends to be hard luck.
It’s your life. Give yourself a hand and don’t drop the ball.
*
Why am I writing about gambling? Simple. It’s a great metaphor for how people approach dating and mating.
I know people who like gambling from time-to-time. (I don’t know anyone who has anything like a gambling addiction—at least in so far as I am aware.) I am told by people who study these things that that the games you can play at a casino vary a great deal in terms of chance and skill. At the two ends of the spectrum are the roulette wheel and black jack. People who are skilled gamblers prefer a game like black jack to roulette because there is some skill involved with black jack. In fact, black jack is a game where your odds relative to the house’s odds are best. It’s not that they are ever as good as the house, mind you, which is why casinos make a great deal of money. Perhaps I should say “take” a great deal of money rather than make it. Roulette is pure chance. You put down a bet (of various kinds, like betting on black or red or a specific number). You drop the ball (or someone does) and round and round it goes, finally dropping down into a slot. You bet on red, and it drops in a red slot, and you win. It drops into black or green and you lose. (By the way, while most slots are red or black, there are a number of green slots which just does to demonstrate to you that your odds don’t even get to the level of 50-50, which is what the red and black bets lull you into believing. The house is not stupid.)
With roulette, you drop the ball and the ball is out of your hands. There is nothing you can adjust once you have placed your bet. You can’t up it, lower it, or get it back. You win or you lose. That’s what you can do. In contrast, black jack takes some skill. There are fairly well understood relative odds that change based on what cards you already have and what cards the dealer is showing. Disciplined black jack players know when the odds have moved against them (and do not bet more) and when the cards they can see suggest they should up their bet and either hold with the cards they have or take more. Good black jack players don’t go by feel, they understand the relative odds and where they have become most favorable, and they act on this.
How is this like relationships? People who are in the relationship market tend to be either playing black jack or roulette. People would be smarter to be playing black jack than roulette. Roulette people are letting things happen to them; they are sliding into relationships or situations and not making decisions. They are letting life happen to them rather than making the best decisions they can with the cards they have been dealt.
What’s the deal? Well, the deal is important. There is no illusion here (or in a casino) that everyone has equal odds of doing well. Some people have been dealt a worse hand than others. We can wish this were not true but, as they say, wishing does not make anything so. I would not go so far in calling this the luck of the draw, but that’s because I believe there is more meaning and purpose and order in our lives than it sometimes looks. But there are good hands and bad hands and in between hands. It’s worth thinking about what is in your hand. I’ll write more about this next time.
While some people do not have ideal options, I believe that everyone has choices. It may be most important of all for those with tougher hands to play to play as well as they can. Everyone can make decisions within the range of things that they control, and, within that range, the odds of doing well in life and love go up. That beats dumb luck. Dumb luck tends to be hard luck.
It’s your life. Give yourself a hand and don’t drop the ball.
*
Monday, July 20, 2009
How Endowed?
I’m back now and ready to write a bit more about the endowment effect. To recap, this is a well-known, potent mechanism wherein people come to value things they already have more than they would value them if they did not have them. It applies to anything but I’m applying it to romantic relationships.
Let’s focus on the downside of this. As I noted in the prior post, the upside of this is that, in good marriages, this effect adds to the total forces of commitment that help you keep on doing what you promised to do—in ways that benefit you, your family, and your children. On the other hand, let’s think about all the relationships, like dating relationships, where some people get stuck with a not very good thing.
What the endowment effect means, in part, is that it’s easy to be biased in thinking that what you have is better than it is. Don’t get me wrong. If what you have is really good and maybe has a wonderful future, nothing I or anyone else is going to write or say will change your mind about it. In fact, don’t give it another thought. But think about a person who’s hanging around and dating someone who’s really not very good for them. It could be that the partner is just not the right type of person or even that they are dangerous in some way. Sometimes people overlook things that really do matter in terms of how their future could turn out as a couple. What might one overlook?
• Drug addiction or abuse
• A lack of a desire to have children when you know that you really want to have children sometime
• Differences in religious beliefs that you think don’t matter but you kind of know it might in the future
• Problems being responsible with money
• Completely different desires for how to spend free time
These are just a few of the types of things that relate to long-term happiness together that some people try very hard to believe just won’t matter. By the way, it’s possible that you are reading this and you realize that you are the one who brings more problems to your relationship and that maybe it’s your partner who should be thinking carefully about you. If that sounds like you, problems in your own life are things that you can work on. It’s possible to change. There are a lot of ways to get help, including religious organizations, community agencies, community mental health centers, jobs services, so forth.
Back to my main point: The endowment effect works on most everyone, and when you are in a relationship that has little chance of a solid future, it can be just one of the factors that makes it hard to get an accurate picture of what your future really would be if you married this person. Does the relationship have real value or is it just a mirage?
Safety note: It’s possible that someone who reads this is in a relationship that is dangerous. If you are in a relationship with someone who can be dangerous or who is highly controlling, you should know that the time one leaves such a relationship can be a particularly dangerous time. If that’s you and you are thinking through your options, find a way to make contact with local or national domestic violence workers who know how to help people increase their chances of staying safe. The national hotline number is: 1-800-799-SAFE(7233)
*
Let’s focus on the downside of this. As I noted in the prior post, the upside of this is that, in good marriages, this effect adds to the total forces of commitment that help you keep on doing what you promised to do—in ways that benefit you, your family, and your children. On the other hand, let’s think about all the relationships, like dating relationships, where some people get stuck with a not very good thing.
What the endowment effect means, in part, is that it’s easy to be biased in thinking that what you have is better than it is. Don’t get me wrong. If what you have is really good and maybe has a wonderful future, nothing I or anyone else is going to write or say will change your mind about it. In fact, don’t give it another thought. But think about a person who’s hanging around and dating someone who’s really not very good for them. It could be that the partner is just not the right type of person or even that they are dangerous in some way. Sometimes people overlook things that really do matter in terms of how their future could turn out as a couple. What might one overlook?
• Drug addiction or abuse
• A lack of a desire to have children when you know that you really want to have children sometime
• Differences in religious beliefs that you think don’t matter but you kind of know it might in the future
• Problems being responsible with money
• Completely different desires for how to spend free time
These are just a few of the types of things that relate to long-term happiness together that some people try very hard to believe just won’t matter. By the way, it’s possible that you are reading this and you realize that you are the one who brings more problems to your relationship and that maybe it’s your partner who should be thinking carefully about you. If that sounds like you, problems in your own life are things that you can work on. It’s possible to change. There are a lot of ways to get help, including religious organizations, community agencies, community mental health centers, jobs services, so forth.
Back to my main point: The endowment effect works on most everyone, and when you are in a relationship that has little chance of a solid future, it can be just one of the factors that makes it hard to get an accurate picture of what your future really would be if you married this person. Does the relationship have real value or is it just a mirage?
Safety note: It’s possible that someone who reads this is in a relationship that is dangerous. If you are in a relationship with someone who can be dangerous or who is highly controlling, you should know that the time one leaves such a relationship can be a particularly dangerous time. If that’s you and you are thinking through your options, find a way to make contact with local or national domestic violence workers who know how to help people increase their chances of staying safe. The national hotline number is: 1-800-799-SAFE(7233)
*
Friday, July 3, 2009
Well Endowed: The Endowment Effect
Okay, that’s a bit of a misleading title for this post, but I am going to say some things today about the Endowment Effect.
First off, a definition: The Endowment Effect is psychological effect discovered by research psychologists and behavioral economists. It reflects the now well-proven fact that people place a greater value on a thing they already own than they would if they did not own that thing and had to buy it.
Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler studied this effect in this way. What they did is give some participants in a study a mug—yes, like a coffee mug. They did not give other participants a mug. Then, they simply examined how much the people with the mugs would be willing to sell them for (around $7) and compared that to how much the people without mugs were willing to pay for one (around $3). The interesting thing here is that these participants only differed in whether or not they happened to be given a free coffee cup. But once owned, they want more to part with it then they’d have been willing to pay for it in the first place. Quite a bit more, in fact. There are now many studies that show this same phenomena in all sorts of ways.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman would relate this to his brilliant work with Amos Tversky that showed, in many ways, that people are more motivated to avoid loss than to attain gain. (I say “brilliant” because, after all, they do reflect my own chosen discipline of psychology. Other than that, I’m sure I have no biases, endowment or otherwise.)
Economist Richard Thaler also named this effect the “status quo bias,” because it reflects the fact that it favors keeping what you already have. By the way, this goes a long, long way toward describing why some people do so poorly when they have a garage sale. They are just too attached to their junk. Those who come by are judging from a different standpoint, one that is closer to the real market value of the stuff. (I personally believe that the main purpose of a garage sale is not to make money but to get other nice people to come to your house and carry away all your junk.)
There are some tricky implications for romantic relationships here. For example, for the average pretty good to great marriage, the Endowment Effect helps you stick to their commitment when times are a bit tougher because you so highly value what you already have. And you should, because you’ve invested a lot and what you invested would result in a lot of loss if you don’t stick. If you are married, have built a life together, have children, and all sorts of other things, you are, so to speak, very well endowed.
On the other hand, what if you are dating and trying to find the right person to spend your life with? This Endowment Effect also means that you can easily get too settled with a current partner who’s not really a good long-term fit, and not move on when maybe you should.
I’ll go a bit deeper on some of the implications in my next post. I have a very busy week coming up, so it may be a bit more than a week before I get back to you. But I will be back!
*
First off, a definition: The Endowment Effect is psychological effect discovered by research psychologists and behavioral economists. It reflects the now well-proven fact that people place a greater value on a thing they already own than they would if they did not own that thing and had to buy it.
Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler studied this effect in this way. What they did is give some participants in a study a mug—yes, like a coffee mug. They did not give other participants a mug. Then, they simply examined how much the people with the mugs would be willing to sell them for (around $7) and compared that to how much the people without mugs were willing to pay for one (around $3). The interesting thing here is that these participants only differed in whether or not they happened to be given a free coffee cup. But once owned, they want more to part with it then they’d have been willing to pay for it in the first place. Quite a bit more, in fact. There are now many studies that show this same phenomena in all sorts of ways.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman would relate this to his brilliant work with Amos Tversky that showed, in many ways, that people are more motivated to avoid loss than to attain gain. (I say “brilliant” because, after all, they do reflect my own chosen discipline of psychology. Other than that, I’m sure I have no biases, endowment or otherwise.)
Economist Richard Thaler also named this effect the “status quo bias,” because it reflects the fact that it favors keeping what you already have. By the way, this goes a long, long way toward describing why some people do so poorly when they have a garage sale. They are just too attached to their junk. Those who come by are judging from a different standpoint, one that is closer to the real market value of the stuff. (I personally believe that the main purpose of a garage sale is not to make money but to get other nice people to come to your house and carry away all your junk.)
There are some tricky implications for romantic relationships here. For example, for the average pretty good to great marriage, the Endowment Effect helps you stick to their commitment when times are a bit tougher because you so highly value what you already have. And you should, because you’ve invested a lot and what you invested would result in a lot of loss if you don’t stick. If you are married, have built a life together, have children, and all sorts of other things, you are, so to speak, very well endowed.
On the other hand, what if you are dating and trying to find the right person to spend your life with? This Endowment Effect also means that you can easily get too settled with a current partner who’s not really a good long-term fit, and not move on when maybe you should.
I’ll go a bit deeper on some of the implications in my next post. I have a very busy week coming up, so it may be a bit more than a week before I get back to you. But I will be back!
*
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Hello, I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC.
I give a lot of talks. Sometimes, my talks are to large audiences. One day a few years ago, I was giving a talk on the differences between men and women when it comes to the development of commitment. There were around 600 people in the audience. This is one of my favorite things to talk about, so I was in a good mood and ready to have a groovy time. (Yeah, I said “groovy.” I’m bringing the word back.)
So, picture this. I’m standing at the podium, the audience is all ready, and I’m maybe 4 minutes into my talk. Just getting going. It will not shock you to know I was using PowerPoint. While PowerPoint can be over done, I think it’s exceptionally useful for talks like this where I want to make a number of points very clearly and not be misread. I also had some nice visuals to depict concepts I wanted to put forth.
Back to 4 minutes into the talk: Freeze. I don’t mean the room grew cold, though it was Summer and I’ve always hated over-refrigerated hotel rooms on those hot muggy days. But, no, the room temperature didn’t change; it was just fine. What got cold feet and froze wasn’t me and it wasn’t the room; it was my PC. I’m a PC. My name is Scott and I’ve always been a PC. (Up until now.) There are many reasons for this, but they do not matter to our story. Generally, I’m quite a geek and have had great success over the years with PCs and keeping them running smoothly.
So, what would you do in my shoes? You are in front of 600 people, you have just begun your talk, and your computer crashes. Of course, there’s nothing for it but to restart the PC. This was a total blue screen of death crash. Ctrl, Alt, Delete was not happenin.
Side tip on giving talks: If you live by technology don’t die by technology. I remember once watching someone else’s keynote address at a conference when their computer froze and they spent 20 minutes—really, 20 minutes—in front of the audience painfully working through fixes to get started again. That’s a very bad thing to do in a major talk. It is not only very boring, it makes the audience really anxious as your anxiety and frustration flow into them. If your equipment fails, just keep going with your talk. If you are multi-tasker like me, restart the equipment but proceed with your talk—even if you’ll be needing to buy a new laptop later that day. The show must go on and talks like this are partly a show. (Related tip: Always bring a printed copy of your notes with you.)
As a speaker, I’ve always used just about whatever happens in the room that’s interesting as part of my talk. I mean, why not? Life is short and stuff like this is an opportunity. There was an interesting dialogue going on now in my head, standing there, audience waiting, while my computer was restarting: “Hmmm. PCs. PCs. What is it about PCs? Maybe I should really be using a MAC, at least for stuff like this. MAC people don’t ever seem to be fiddling with their computers just to get their tasks done. Heck, with a PC, something that worked perfectly well yesterday can’t be counted on to work today. PCs give you that exciting edge of life, feeling, where you just don’t know. How boring would it be to have a MAC and just have things work all the time? How realistic is that? Hm. . . . I got it.”
Okay, back to the audience. This turned into one of my favorite moments in my history of giving talks.
How is marriage like the difference between MACs and PCs? Or rather, how are differences in marriages like MACs and PCs?
Most marriages, and I mean perfectly good, worth working on, solid marriages, are like PCs, not MACs. Just as there are many more PCs in the world than MACs, and there are many more PC marriages than MAC marriages. (BTW, if you think I’m talking about what type of computer you have at home or in your briefcase, you haven’t shifted yet to the more abstract level. I’m not talking computer equipment now.)
Here’s the deal. While the people I know with MACs are not always perfectly happy with their MACs, they are mostly a seriously happy lot when it comes to computing. They turn on their computers (which look gorgeous, of course), they do what they meant to do in getting on their computers, they don’t think as much about the computer as they do about just doing their tasks or following their interests, and then they move on. How simple. It starts up, you click on some things, you happily compute, and when you are done, you do something else. And none of your time involves searching for some error message on Google. Now seriously, that’s not my experience with PCs. PCs are something else.
PCs add a sense of deep mystery to life that is more in tune with the way life really is. PC people are living closer to reality in some cosmic sense.
Some people have MAC marriages but most people have PC marriages. You know you have a MAC marriage if it just works most all the time and you don’t’ think about why it works or how to make it keep working. You know you have a PC marriage if you have to frequently reboot, install a patch, update something, scan for problems, or simply endure the fact that something is not working today that worked perfectly well yesterday. PCs are exciting. MACs? Oh, they are so boring.
I think some people end up in MAC marriages—again, which are much more rare than PC marriages—simply because of luck. Others do so because they are very careful in the right ways about how they partnered up. For some couples, they simply had compatibility, attraction and a big ole helping of easy-going-ness. (Those with MAC marriages should not be arrogant; being thankful would be more the thing or else you may find your MAC starting to slow down.)
Most marriages, and this includes very good marriage, are PCs. They take effort in order to keep doing the work of life. The truth is, in healthy marriages that have enough of the right stuff and that are not dangerous, the work is worth it. Sadly that message is regularly undermined in our culture. But it’s true, and much research supports the point. There’s no getting around the work. It’s just part of life in a PC marriage. And remember this, those of you in PC marriages: You have the opportunity of getting that deep sense of satisfaction that comes from overcoming things together. MAC marriage people can only dream of that joy.
*
So, picture this. I’m standing at the podium, the audience is all ready, and I’m maybe 4 minutes into my talk. Just getting going. It will not shock you to know I was using PowerPoint. While PowerPoint can be over done, I think it’s exceptionally useful for talks like this where I want to make a number of points very clearly and not be misread. I also had some nice visuals to depict concepts I wanted to put forth.
Back to 4 minutes into the talk: Freeze. I don’t mean the room grew cold, though it was Summer and I’ve always hated over-refrigerated hotel rooms on those hot muggy days. But, no, the room temperature didn’t change; it was just fine. What got cold feet and froze wasn’t me and it wasn’t the room; it was my PC. I’m a PC. My name is Scott and I’ve always been a PC. (Up until now.) There are many reasons for this, but they do not matter to our story. Generally, I’m quite a geek and have had great success over the years with PCs and keeping them running smoothly.
So, what would you do in my shoes? You are in front of 600 people, you have just begun your talk, and your computer crashes. Of course, there’s nothing for it but to restart the PC. This was a total blue screen of death crash. Ctrl, Alt, Delete was not happenin.
Side tip on giving talks: If you live by technology don’t die by technology. I remember once watching someone else’s keynote address at a conference when their computer froze and they spent 20 minutes—really, 20 minutes—in front of the audience painfully working through fixes to get started again. That’s a very bad thing to do in a major talk. It is not only very boring, it makes the audience really anxious as your anxiety and frustration flow into them. If your equipment fails, just keep going with your talk. If you are multi-tasker like me, restart the equipment but proceed with your talk—even if you’ll be needing to buy a new laptop later that day. The show must go on and talks like this are partly a show. (Related tip: Always bring a printed copy of your notes with you.)
As a speaker, I’ve always used just about whatever happens in the room that’s interesting as part of my talk. I mean, why not? Life is short and stuff like this is an opportunity. There was an interesting dialogue going on now in my head, standing there, audience waiting, while my computer was restarting: “Hmmm. PCs. PCs. What is it about PCs? Maybe I should really be using a MAC, at least for stuff like this. MAC people don’t ever seem to be fiddling with their computers just to get their tasks done. Heck, with a PC, something that worked perfectly well yesterday can’t be counted on to work today. PCs give you that exciting edge of life, feeling, where you just don’t know. How boring would it be to have a MAC and just have things work all the time? How realistic is that? Hm. . . . I got it.”
Okay, back to the audience. This turned into one of my favorite moments in my history of giving talks.
How is marriage like the difference between MACs and PCs? Or rather, how are differences in marriages like MACs and PCs?
Most marriages, and I mean perfectly good, worth working on, solid marriages, are like PCs, not MACs. Just as there are many more PCs in the world than MACs, and there are many more PC marriages than MAC marriages. (BTW, if you think I’m talking about what type of computer you have at home or in your briefcase, you haven’t shifted yet to the more abstract level. I’m not talking computer equipment now.)
Here’s the deal. While the people I know with MACs are not always perfectly happy with their MACs, they are mostly a seriously happy lot when it comes to computing. They turn on their computers (which look gorgeous, of course), they do what they meant to do in getting on their computers, they don’t think as much about the computer as they do about just doing their tasks or following their interests, and then they move on. How simple. It starts up, you click on some things, you happily compute, and when you are done, you do something else. And none of your time involves searching for some error message on Google. Now seriously, that’s not my experience with PCs. PCs are something else.
PCs add a sense of deep mystery to life that is more in tune with the way life really is. PC people are living closer to reality in some cosmic sense.
Some people have MAC marriages but most people have PC marriages. You know you have a MAC marriage if it just works most all the time and you don’t’ think about why it works or how to make it keep working. You know you have a PC marriage if you have to frequently reboot, install a patch, update something, scan for problems, or simply endure the fact that something is not working today that worked perfectly well yesterday. PCs are exciting. MACs? Oh, they are so boring.
I think some people end up in MAC marriages—again, which are much more rare than PC marriages—simply because of luck. Others do so because they are very careful in the right ways about how they partnered up. For some couples, they simply had compatibility, attraction and a big ole helping of easy-going-ness. (Those with MAC marriages should not be arrogant; being thankful would be more the thing or else you may find your MAC starting to slow down.)
Most marriages, and this includes very good marriage, are PCs. They take effort in order to keep doing the work of life. The truth is, in healthy marriages that have enough of the right stuff and that are not dangerous, the work is worth it. Sadly that message is regularly undermined in our culture. But it’s true, and much research supports the point. There’s no getting around the work. It’s just part of life in a PC marriage. And remember this, those of you in PC marriages: You have the opportunity of getting that deep sense of satisfaction that comes from overcoming things together. MAC marriage people can only dream of that joy.
*
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Daughter of Son of a Son of Dissonance (Cognitive Dissonance IV)
Maybe it’s just a bad movie that keeps coming back, but I’m not having any dissonance over writing so much about cognitive dissonance. (If you are tired of the topic, I really do think this is the last post on this for the time being.)
Some of you have been thinking about where I left off (and some have not). If you want the full background, you really need to read some or all of the prior three posts. In the prior post, I left off with a question about what cognitive dissonance might have to do with the trend for ever more expensive weddings. Caveat: I would guess, but do not know, that there is some reigning in on wedding expenses by those who historically could or would spend a lot, given our current economic downturn. Nevertheless, here’s a theory of why some people are spending amazing amounts of money on weddings.
My Theory
We live in a time when people largely are still interested in marriage. The image of marriage has been tarnished and confidence in marriage has suffered, but people want it. Why, you might ask? Because marriage remains the preeminent symbol of commitment for two people interested in life-long love. Sure, not everyone is into it or can be into it (a matter way too complex for me to touch here), but it remains what most people want and what most people will seek.
My theoretical assumptions look like this:
Assume people are more anxious than ever before maintaining life-long love.
Assume people are as likely as ever to fall in love.
Assume that most people will seek to address commitment in love by marrying.
Assume that the security of marriage, as a vehicle for commitment, has suffered.
Assume that cognitive dissonance is a fact of the human experience.
Some people who can afford it (and many who cannot) will spend an amazing amount of money on their wedding because doing so creates a particularly strong cognitive dissonance dynamic that serves to reinforce the commitment. I’m NOT saying that these folks are more committed than those spending a lot less (you can’t believe how little my wife and I spent on our wedding). What I am saying is that some folks will feel acutely a need to create a binding commitment that lasts, and dissonance theory predicts that making a bigger deal, spending more, and having more guests, etc., will all add to the power of the dissonance force that is created.
Suppose you have the Smiths and the Jones. They are identical—virtual clones, of each other in all ways that matter, including desire to marry for life and anxiety about marriage for life working. And let’s assume that the anxiety is pretty strong for all four people involved because they all came from homes where they saw commitment not work out very well, up close and personal. (Refer back to research by Paul Amato and colleagues, and Sarah Whitton and I and colleagues, some posts back. )
The only difference: The Smiths pay $ 30,000.00 for their wedding and the Jones pay $ 3000.00 for theirs. What researchers like Rosenblatt predicted long ago (1977 is pretty long ago, right?) is that when times get a little tough, like they usually do, the Smiths will feel a stronger force of dissonance to keep to their committed path than will the Jones. The reason is simply that the Smiths more strongly built a dissonance that will add extra discomfort when tempted not to follow through. In their heads it sounds like this (if you could put it into words so easily): “I really made a big deal and a big investment out of committing to my partner, and in front of scads of people; I simply have to follow through. I must have really meant it!”
I’m suggesting that the escalation in what people are willing to spend on weddings may be a form of buying insurance for their marriages. (For some, obviously, it’s simply about a big, showy, expression of wealth, which is another matter altogether.)
Am I recommending this? Nope. I’d rather see people have reasonable wedding costs and better savings—or less debt—at the start of their marriages. I’d also much rather see people invest in things like learning about how to communicate, manage conflict, clarify expectations, and build and preserve friendship and commitment in marriage by doing things like attending a marriage/relationship education class. There’s more than money when it comes to ways to invest in your relationship.
As a poignant side point: Researchers who study couples in poverty note an especially strong desire to have a formal wedding rather than merely go to the justice of the peace. The stated reasons are often about respecting marriage by respecting the wedding process. In this, I think there is a recognition of the positive role of ceremony in forming strong commitments. This makes particular sense for couples who tend to have very high respect for marriage but a lot of odds stacked against their marriages when it comes to making it in life. Here, the goal isn’t a lavish wedding but a solid, good enough, serious ceremony. That’s a nice goal.
*
Some of you have been thinking about where I left off (and some have not). If you want the full background, you really need to read some or all of the prior three posts. In the prior post, I left off with a question about what cognitive dissonance might have to do with the trend for ever more expensive weddings. Caveat: I would guess, but do not know, that there is some reigning in on wedding expenses by those who historically could or would spend a lot, given our current economic downturn. Nevertheless, here’s a theory of why some people are spending amazing amounts of money on weddings.
My Theory
We live in a time when people largely are still interested in marriage. The image of marriage has been tarnished and confidence in marriage has suffered, but people want it. Why, you might ask? Because marriage remains the preeminent symbol of commitment for two people interested in life-long love. Sure, not everyone is into it or can be into it (a matter way too complex for me to touch here), but it remains what most people want and what most people will seek.
My theoretical assumptions look like this:
Assume people are more anxious than ever before maintaining life-long love.
Assume people are as likely as ever to fall in love.
Assume that most people will seek to address commitment in love by marrying.
Assume that the security of marriage, as a vehicle for commitment, has suffered.
Assume that cognitive dissonance is a fact of the human experience.
Some people who can afford it (and many who cannot) will spend an amazing amount of money on their wedding because doing so creates a particularly strong cognitive dissonance dynamic that serves to reinforce the commitment. I’m NOT saying that these folks are more committed than those spending a lot less (you can’t believe how little my wife and I spent on our wedding). What I am saying is that some folks will feel acutely a need to create a binding commitment that lasts, and dissonance theory predicts that making a bigger deal, spending more, and having more guests, etc., will all add to the power of the dissonance force that is created.
Suppose you have the Smiths and the Jones. They are identical—virtual clones, of each other in all ways that matter, including desire to marry for life and anxiety about marriage for life working. And let’s assume that the anxiety is pretty strong for all four people involved because they all came from homes where they saw commitment not work out very well, up close and personal. (Refer back to research by Paul Amato and colleagues, and Sarah Whitton and I and colleagues, some posts back. )
The only difference: The Smiths pay $ 30,000.00 for their wedding and the Jones pay $ 3000.00 for theirs. What researchers like Rosenblatt predicted long ago (1977 is pretty long ago, right?) is that when times get a little tough, like they usually do, the Smiths will feel a stronger force of dissonance to keep to their committed path than will the Jones. The reason is simply that the Smiths more strongly built a dissonance that will add extra discomfort when tempted not to follow through. In their heads it sounds like this (if you could put it into words so easily): “I really made a big deal and a big investment out of committing to my partner, and in front of scads of people; I simply have to follow through. I must have really meant it!”
I’m suggesting that the escalation in what people are willing to spend on weddings may be a form of buying insurance for their marriages. (For some, obviously, it’s simply about a big, showy, expression of wealth, which is another matter altogether.)
Am I recommending this? Nope. I’d rather see people have reasonable wedding costs and better savings—or less debt—at the start of their marriages. I’d also much rather see people invest in things like learning about how to communicate, manage conflict, clarify expectations, and build and preserve friendship and commitment in marriage by doing things like attending a marriage/relationship education class. There’s more than money when it comes to ways to invest in your relationship.
As a poignant side point: Researchers who study couples in poverty note an especially strong desire to have a formal wedding rather than merely go to the justice of the peace. The stated reasons are often about respecting marriage by respecting the wedding process. In this, I think there is a recognition of the positive role of ceremony in forming strong commitments. This makes particular sense for couples who tend to have very high respect for marriage but a lot of odds stacked against their marriages when it comes to making it in life. Here, the goal isn’t a lavish wedding but a solid, good enough, serious ceremony. That’s a nice goal.
*
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
