Married people are happier than divorced people

1. Married people are happier than divorced people By Roisin Forrester & Rebecca Pryde

2. Subjective well-being • Subjective well-being (SWB) refers to people’s evaluations of their lives including cognitive judgements, such as life satisfaction and effective evaluations, such as positive and negative feelings. • SWB research focuses on how and why people experience their lives in positive ways (Diener,1984). • The positive relation between marriage and SWB has been consistently reported. Large scale surveys indicate that married people report greater happiness (Glenn & Weaver, 1979; Gove, Hughes & Style, 1983). • Happy people may have a better chance of getting married. Selection effects and the benefits of marriage may underlie the relation between marriage and SWB. • So, are married people happier than divorced people?

3. Marital Status and Well-Being: A National Study Comparing First-Married, Currently Divorced, and Remarried Adults.Weingarten, H., R. (1985) • The relationship of marital status to well-being was investigated by comparing national survey responses of first-married, remarried, and currently divorced adults. • To account for the empirical relationship between divorce and distress, Bloom, Asher and White (1978) review the literature and offer four major hypotheses. • A "pre-existing pathology" model, which suggests that physically or emotionally handicapped persons are less likely to remain married than "healthier" individuals. • A second hypothesis suggests that emotional or physical problems arising subsequent to marriage increase the likelihood that a given marriage will be terminated by divorce. • A third hypothesis argues that an intact marriage operates as a form of health protection. • A fourth hypothesis, a "crisis" model, posits that marital disruption is a severe life stressor.

4. Aims of the study & methodology • This study extends a previous study by Weingarten (1980). • First, currently divorced and remarried respondents are compared. • Second, remarried and first married respondents are contrasted. • In addition, first-married and currently divorced respondents are evaluated • The data reported in the study is derived from a national survey of the American adult population conducted by the Survey Research Centre at the University of Michigan in 1976. • 2,264 adults were selected by area probability sampling methods. • Information on current marital status was obtained . • The final sample consisted of 184 white adults remarried subsequent to divorce, 1,068 first-married white respondents, and 200 currently divorced white adults.

5. Currently Divorced vs. Remarried • A number of striking differences are found on items assessing the respondents' current happiness. • The divorced are significantly more likely to report that they are "not too happy," less likely to report that the present is their happiest time of life. • Both groups report similar levels of self-esteem, perceived internal control, self-acceptance, and no higher levels of dissatisfaction, perceived shortcomings, worry, health symptoms, and substance use than do remarried respondents. • The divorced are similar to the remarrieds with respect to experienced strain and perceived inadequacy, and dissimilar primarily with respect to morale or happiness. • The divorced group stands out as being well adjusted, although considerably less happy, than the remarried-respondent group.

6. Remarried vs. Currently married Rema Currently Divorced vs. Remarried rried vs. Currently Married • The remarried and currently married differ on certain dimensions of personal adjustment. • Regardless of whether people remarry, respondents who have experienced divorce differ from the never-divorced married. • The remarried have been shown to be as likely as first marrieds to report they feel "very happy," to feel that the present is the happiest time of their lives, and to feel optimistic about the future. • In addition, the remarried experience equally high levels of self-acceptance, self-esteem, personal control, and no higher levels of worry, and anxiety, than their first-married peers. • Furthermore, on composite measures of ill health and substance use (e.g., alcohol and medicine), measures particularly sensitive to chronic stress, the remarried report more symptoms than persons in intact first marriages.

7. Currently Divorced vs. Intact First Married • A number of additional contrasts emerge as significant in these comparisons. • The currently divorced do emerge as less zestful, less satisfied, and more anxious. • They are equally positive in their level of self-acceptance, equally high in self-esteem, and no higher in their reports of immobilization or frequency of worrying. • Furthermore, while the divorced are significantly less likely to be very optimistic about the future, they are no more likely to be pessimistic about what life has in store for them. • Thus, while one must recognize that being divorced has certain enduring negative consequences for subjective well-being, it is also important to stress how these effects are confined to certain dimensions of well-being rather than being evenly distributed among them all.

8. Conclusions • By comparing the currently divorced with previously divorced remarried, and with intact first marriages, it was found that there are both important differences and striking similarities in general well-being. • Although it has been suggested that people who end marriages by divorce are probably less healthy, there is little in this comparative exploration to substantiate such a global view. • From a conceptual viewpoint one might acknowledge that being married is less stressful as a life condition than is being remarried. • The finding that experiencing divorce and remarriage has, at most, limited impact on current adjustment is also consistent with trends in the life crisis literature. • A crisis perspective might hold that the passage of time in and of itself offers sufficient opportunities for the establishment of a gratifying and happy life. • Nonetheless, the current well-being of the formerly divorced remarried person and the self-esteem and self-confidence of the currently divorced person argue against the validity of theories.

9. What other studies have found……… • The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success? Lyubomirsky, King and Diener, 2005 • A meta- analysis by Lyubomirsky et al (2005) supports findings that married people are happier than all other groups and also found that this is true across diverse cultures. • The study also found that happy people tend to have fulfilling marriages and be more satisfied in their marriage. • Moreover, family life and marriage has been found to be the strongest correlate of happiness, stronger than any other kind of domain satisfaction. • It has also been suggested that individual happiness is even associated with high marital satisfaction in one’s partner.

10. What other studies have found……… Adaptation and subjective well-being (Lucas, 2007). Lucas questioned whether major life events such as divorce really affect long-term levels of SWB, or whether people inevitably adapt after experiencing a major life event. According to Hedonic adaptation individuals return to baseline levels of happiness following a change in life circumstances. Previous studies (Lucas 2005; Lucas et al., 2003) showed that marriage was not associated with lasting increases in happiness. People who eventually divorced, started out with lower levels of well-being than those who did not divorce. These findings are illustrated in Figure 2 and show levels of life satisfaction before and after marriage as plotted for participants who eventually divorced and those who stayed married.

11. What other studies have found……… • A study by Lucas, Clark, Georgellis & Diener (2003) also supports adaptation theory following marital transitions and maintains that marriage is not associated with lasting increases in happiness. • They agree that adaptation occurs, but do not believe the process can be described as a hedonic treadmill. • However, changes in marital status seem to be capable of producing new baseline levels of life satisfaction for individuals. People who had strong reactions to marriage did not adapt back to their former baseline. • Their study also found that people who get married and stay married are more satisfied than average long before the marriage has occurred.

12. What other studies have found……… • Does marriage make people happier or do happy people get married (Stutzer & Frey, 2006) • Singles who we know will get married are happier than persons who will stay single, even after taking important observable socio-demographic characteristics into account. • There is a strong age pattern in this selection effect. • By the age of 30, singles who will marry report no different subjective well-being than those who will not marry. • After 30, the prospective spouses are again a systematically more satisfied selection. • It is unlikely that these selection effects can explain the entire difference in well-being between singles and married people. • People who get divorced were not only less happy during marriage but also less happy before they got married.

13. Future research Sophisticated methodologies must be used to assess adaptation to a wide variety of events. Programmatic research should lead to greater insight into the processes that underlie hedonic adaptation. There are considerable individual differences in the amount of adaptation that occurs. A third research goal is to clarify the individual-level characteristics that promote or prevent adaptation.

14. Take home message Longitudinal studies add to the understanding of adaptation to marital transitions by following individuals for many years before and after events have occurred. Adaptation to events does occur. People initially react strongly to both good and bad events, but then their emotional reactions dampen. The extent to which people adapt is strongly related to the degree to which they react to the initial event those individuals who reacted strongly were still far from baseline levels years after the event. There are substantial individual differences in the extent to which people adapt. Selection effects appear to make happy people more likely to get and stay married. In the case of marriage, very little change in SWB occurs on average. Marriage is not associated with lasting increases in happiness.