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Here's my fantasy. (Well, other than the one where I walk onto a plane or train and the person next to me is reading Singled Out.) Some high-profile reporter from a prestigious publication writes a long, serious piece on the hoax that has been perpetrated for decades, about how getting married makes people happier and healthier and more connected and live longer and get better sex and all the rest. That reporter would take a look at the actual studies, and not just press releases about them. Then realize that we've all been had. Then say so.
That hasn't happened. But yesterday, someone came as close as I've ever seen anyone come to doing so. Stacy Jones got in touch to ask me what I thought of the relentless stream of studies about the supposed boost to happiness of getting married. She particularly wanted to know about that recent research making a strong causal claim – that getting married causes people to become happier, and it isn't just associated with greater happiness in some murkier way. That research, which was only in a working paper and not even in a peer-reviewed journal, got tons of big-time media attention.
As you may remember, I had a whole lot to say about that research (here and here, for example), almost none of it good. Jones had access to those posts and my answers to some of her additional questions. Then she did what good reporters should do – she took my criticisms to one of the original authors and asked him what he thought. I don't know if he would agree with my characterization of his response, but I'd say he cried uncle.
You can read the entire Stacy Jones article, "Are married couples really happier?", if you like. (It is not very long.) If you do, you will see that she quotes me explaining that if you are going to make a claim like those authors did, that getting married makes people happier, then you can't set aside the people who got married and then got divorced.
She also tells readers how markedly the results changed once the authors abandoned the cheater technique and reanalyzed some of their data in the more accurate way.
In response, Jones said, co-author John Helliwell explained that "working papers are meant to invite criticism from peers, like DePaulo." He also said that he and his co-author are not apologists for marriage and that they also were not saying (as several headlines proclaimed) that people should marry their best friend.
Jones ends with this great piece of advice for single people: "Next time someone waves a data-based study at you, claiming it proves something about your happiness, you have my permission to (happily) ignore them."
Okay, so Bankrate, where the article was published, is not the New York Times, and the article just begins to take on the matrimania that has been soaking our society for way too long. But articles like this one are so rare, and so needed, and I want to thank Stacy Jones for writing it.
A few other things:
In my previous post, I invited you to critique the claims made in the New York Times about why, in some families, all of the grown children are single. There were so many smart comments (and so many possible critiques) that it is going to take me more than one post to get to enough of them. The first one is here.
Also, curious about the story about Brian Williams and his war story that did not really happen? There was a good article in the Atlantic, "In defense of Brian Williams's almost-memories" that mentions some of my research on deception. (My blog posts on deception are here and my books are here.)
[Image is from Google images, labeled for reuse]
