- Home
- Find a Therapist
- Topic Streams
- Get Help
Mental Health
Addiction
ADHD
Anxiety
Asperger's
Autism
Bipolar Disorder
Depression
Eating Disorders
Insomnia
OCDPersonality
Passive Aggression
Personality
ShynessPersonal Growth
Happiness
Goal Setting
Positive PsychologyRelationships
Low Sexual Desire
Relationships
SexEmotion Management
Anger
Procrastination
StressFamily Life
Adolescents
Child Development
Elder Care
Parenting
SiblingsRecently Diagnosed?
Diagnosis Dictionary
- Magazine
- Tests
- Psych Basics
- Experts
The results of what is probably the longest-running study of longevity ever conducted (ongoing since 1921) showed that two groups of people lived the longest: those who got married and stayed married, and those who stayed single. What mattered was consistency, not marriage. The results were the same for the men and the women. Claims that getting married increases your lifespan are typically based on the cheater method of pretending that people who got divorced or widowed never did get married. Call it a statistical annulment. Read More
Funny that people rarely ask about the mechanism
That is, if it was true that married people live longer, why? What mechanism is responsible? And could it work for single people too?
For example, if it was found that married people lived longer because of greater social ties wouldn't that mean that singles who cultivated social ties would live just as long?
But that usually doesn't happen. People just say "It's because of marriage" at leave it at that.
reply to Alan
yes, or maybe they'd find that singles live *longer* because they have *more* social ties. . .
--Christina
HuH! I'vw been married for
HuH! I'vw been married for 20yrs now. yea it used to fine, but now I feel that if i stay married any longer than 20 or 21 years that my blood pressure will be up all the time and eventually die of heart attack and die unhappy!
MARRIAGE
Marriage doesn't make you live longer... it just feels like it. Hah, old joke but I couldn't resist.
I think the article was intended to be a joke
I read the article and got the impression it was mainly a parody of drug ads, not a serious endorsement of marriage. And the quote from RAND was likely a joke too.
It's because it was Valentine's Day
I am 27 and single. I have had the opportunity for marriage but have seen so many fail around me. Yeah, they probably all will get remarried. So, that is a lot of people just around me. That really means that statistic is screwed.
It seems like everywhere I go somebody is trying to put the "crown" on marriage. When I look at most of the people around me I see "divorce" all over it. They really need to a redo on that study....LOL
Huh?
It seems to me your position uses marriage as an event while those you're criticizing are using it to mean a process, so that the claimed benefits last so long as you STAY married.
That seems perfectly reasonable.
Your position is like saying exercise doesn't really give you benefits because I've looked at people who once exercised (yet no longer do) and they don't show these benefits. Well duh!
I admit the causation issue is tough, but your critique is a bit odd.
Great post
Cool article you got here. I'd like to read more about that topic.
To "Huh?", measure marriage as you would other ventures
Dr. DePaulo is exactly right about the cherry picking of marriage data... for the poster who said "Huh?", let me try to explain it with a different metaphor:
Suppose you study startup businesses. You come to the conclusion, looking at how people are faring after 5 or 10 years in business, that starting your own business is a really good idea. The data is clear: the longer you stay in business, the higher your income. Heck, everyone should quit their day job and start their own business!
Here is where Dr. DePaulo (and other intellectually honest people) would step in and say, let's think about this: did every business startup succeed, and make it to the 5 or 10 year mark? How many startups simply didn't work out?
Ah...factor that in, a comprehensive view of the matter for someone contemplating starting a business, and in an instant the picture is far more sobering. Statistically, if you start your own business, it will probably not last. The correct conclusion is, -on average- if you start your own business you will lose money and have to go back to working for The Man. Startups that make it to 10 years don't do so because of volitional "I want to" decisions--it's a result of whether the business turned out to work. A rational person would understand that the odds are against him or her, and would need to decide, can I swallow the (likely) financial setback?
It is bad statistics to take only the startups that last 10 years and say, here, on average this is how much money you will earn starting your own business. Picking Google and NetFlix as your data set, and ignoring dozens of family restaurants that folded, Pets.com, and so on, is disingenuous at best.
It is the same with measuring marriage success. If you throw out the data points for marriages that did not last, that is cherry picking data. One must start with all marriages (N), track the success of all, add together all success points, divide by N, and there's your answer, Z, where Z is the average success score of marriage. Correspondingly, one could say "Y" is the average success score of people who never married.
As Dr. DePaulo points out, Z is less than Y. It's just math--on *average*, people who never marry will be happier than those who do marry.
brilliant!
Logic001, your analogy with the start-ups is just brilliant! I may refer to it in the future, crediting "Logic001." If you'd like me to credit you by your real name instead, just email it to me. Thanks!
I often wonder why
I often wonder why actuararies seem to live the longest.
May be reason is natural selection
May be it is an inverse effect. Getting married does not make everyone live longer, but healthier people, physically and psychologically, has more chances to get a partner and to be married.
marraige and longevity
after reading about this topic it seems that men who are older[80 and older]live longer because their wives take care of them.
Post new comment