Psychology Today Blogs - Living Single

Bigger, Broader Meanings of Love and Romance

Bella DePaulo — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:14:57 -0700

A few weeks ago, Ted Sorensen - husband, father, and renowned speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy - was interviewed by the New York Times. Consider this excerpt:

NY Times: "Was your working relationship with J.F.K. the great love affair of your life?"
Sorensen: "Yes, of course."

A public figure, a married man, says to the paper of record that the great love affair of his life was not with his wife but with his boss, the President.

Ted Sorensen is not listening to the music. Lyrics such as "You're my everything;" "I just want to be your everything;" and "How do I live without you?...You're my world, my heart, my soul" express the myth of modern marriage: Find "The One" and your whole life falls into place. No pursuit, no passion, no love could be any greater than the love you feel when you finally embrace your soulmate - not music, not scientific discovery, and surely not speechwriting.

To many Americans, the soulmate interpretation of love is not an interpretation, it is not a myth, and it is not modern. Rather, it is The Way It Is, and the way it always has been. I think I believed something like that myself, before I started doing the research for Singled Out. It didn't make any sense for me to believe in the soulmate mythology, since I have always been single, I've always loved my single life (well, except for the singlism and the matrimania), and I have never had any desire to become unsingle. Still, I figured I was the exception.

In my high school, history was taught by the athletic coaches, so we learned mostly about the history of the scoring that took place in the game the night before. I realized how woefully unprepared I was to take a real history course when I got to college, so I didn't. Those were the days when there were hardly any requirements. I took 19 psychology courses.

Once I started reading social history, all these years later, I was amazed at what I had missed. From Francesca Cancian's Love in America, I learned that less than a century before the married couple and their feelings for each other had become so glorified, "intimacy and sexual relations between spouses were NOT central and both spouses had important ties with relatives and friends of their own sex."

In Marriage, A History, Stephanie Coontz noted that during the 1800s, Westerners believed that "love developed slowly out of admiration, respect, and appreciation;" therefore, "the love one felt for a sweetheart was not seen as qualitatively different from the feeling one might have for a sister, a friend, or even an idea."

I don't think Americans have lost the bigger, broader senses of love and romance and passion and meaning that have probably been part of the human experience through the ages. Rather, I think that contemporary American society has been slow to give those experiences their due. It is ordinary, nowadays, to express one's love and devotion to a life partner. It is far from ordinary to do as Sorensen did and proclaim his life's work to be the great love affair of his life.

I've taken to gathering unabashed expressions of dedication to something or someone other than a soulmate. Here's a sampling from my collection.

In 2004, singer and songwriter John Mayer told Newsweek: "I really might just be the guy who loves playing music so much that [even] if I'm on a date with somebody, I can't wait to go home and play guitar. If I even seal the deal, I can't wait for them to leave so I can play the guitar."

Sometimes book titles say it all. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, for instance, is about the brilliant mathematician Paul Erdos, who spend decades "crisscrossing four continents, chasing mathematical problems in pursuit of lasting beauty and ultimate truth."

The title Liberty, A Better Husband comes from the diary of Louisa May Alcott. The author was writing about the single woman of antebellum America, who "envisioned her liberty as both autonomy and affiliation...Her freedom enabled her to commit her life and her capacities to the betterment of her sex, her community, or her kin."

For generations of women and men devoted to the cause of social justice, the meanings of love and passion have always transcended diamond rings and limestone altars.

Of course, Ted Sorensen, John Mayer, Paul Erdos, and Louisa May Alcott are in the stratospheres of their fields. That's not a requirement. Love and romance and meaning can be found in everyday life. In her book, The New Single Woman, Kay Trimberger described one woman's passion for flamenco dancing. A whole book full of tributes to big, broad meanings of love is what you will find in Isn't It Romantic? Finding the Magic in Everyday Life. Examples range from the love of nature and architecture to the "the romance of perfect solitude" and the weaving and cherishing of a "web of silver strings" between a Juilliard teacher of song and her vulnerable students.

There's a special place in my collection for the pairs of people who have said the following about one another: "We fell in love." "We are planning a future together." "We use the exact same expressions, sighs, and body language without realizing it, often at the same time." We are "memory banks for each other." All are quotes from friends, not lovers.

Here's one last example. This one comes from a woman writing about the appeal of working alone in her office at home:

"There I am drawn to the warm southern exposure, the familiarity of my papers strewn everywhere, piles on the bed, the floor, the desk. Mostly, I'm drawn to the stillness. The only sound is the muted hum of the computer. I've dreamed of a room like this for years but never imagined how comforting it would feel to walk in every day."

The person who wrote this was married, but was craving a sabbatical from her marriage. What she really wanted, at least for a while, was to be single. Now THAT's romantic!

Single Voters Should Rule, But Will They?

Bella DePaulo — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:42:54 -0700

It is election season in the U.S. and singles should rule! At 92 million strong, they compose a huge potential voting bloc.

But will they make good on the power of their numbers? Historically, they have not voted at rates as high as married people have.

For years, I've been following the place of people who are single in the American political process. I look at what the candidates say or don't say, and how the media covers single voters - or whether it covers them at all.

Compared to 2004, there are some intriguing signs of progress. But there is still a long way to go. If you are interested, take a look at my blog on the Huffington Post:

Anyone Want a Few Million More Votes?

The Huffington Post is a very political site, so my blog is, too. However, I do mention some of the very latest social science data - for example, on the ways that singles are maintaining intergenerational ties and creating networks of care - so I hope that at least those parts of the post will be of interest to Psych Today readers. Enjoy!

Singlism and Matrimania in Everyday Life

Bella DePaulo — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:07:21 -0700

One of the most tenacious myths about single people is that they are miserable and lonely, and suffer from ill-health and low self-esteem because, after all, they "don't have anyone." All that is pure nonsense - that's why I get to call these notions myths rather than realities.

In many ways, though, it is understandable that people THINK singles are miserable. Singlism (the stereotyping and stigmatizing of people who are single) and matrimania (the over-the-top hyping of marriage and coupling) are the wallpaper of contemporary American life.

SNIPPETS OF SINGLISM

Here are 6 sample snippets of everyday singlism and matrimania:

1. On April 23, the day after the Pennsylvania primary, Jack Cafferty of CNN posed this question: "Why can't Barack Obama close the deal?" Of the hundreds of responses that viewers sent in, only 5 were read on the air. This, from Steve in Atlanta, was one of them: "Jack, Obama can't close the deal because all of the older women are voting for the Clintons. Every family has a crazy aunt. I just found out that mine thinks Hillary is the best candidate. These women should stay out of politics and go play with their 11 cats."

2. A few months ago, Time magazine published a special issue on the science of romance. In an article called "Marry Me," Time claimed that getting married makes you healthier. (In Singled Out, I debunked that claim, and showed why some of the very studies cited by Time really do not support that conclusion.) To explain this (false) statement, Time said, "Marriage means no more drinking at singles' bars until closing, no more eating uncooked ramen noodles out of the bag and calling it a meal."

3. During the Pope's recent visit to the U.S., CNN commentators did the play-by-play of the Bushes meeting the pontiff at the airport. One of them noted, "I know that the Pope was very interested in meeting the president's family, especially Jenna, since she's going to be married soon." Wolf Blitzer then speculated that the Pope must be planning a blessing for the occasion. The reporter replied, "Well, I understand that the gift that he's going to give is going to be designed for Jenna."

Personally, I don't know why anyone should be more interested in meeting someone about to be married than someone who is single and not planning to become unsingle anytime soon. But the POPE? Isn't HE single? Here, I want to give a shout-out to the wonderful title of a book written by Karen Salmansohn, another Psychology Today blogger: Even God is Single (so stop giving me a hard time).

4. During the Hardball College Tour, Chris Matthews asked Barack Obama how he manages to stay away from smoking. The Democratic Presidential candidate replied, "I think that it is important to just keep in mind, I have a nine-year-old daughter and a six-year-old daughter. And I want to give them away at their weddings."

5. A few weeks later, on the day after one of the Democratic Presidential debates, Chris Matthews offered this guess about what the debate watchers were thinking as the evening progressed: "They stopped listening a half-hour in, and they noticed how pretty she is - Michelle - and they said, ‘I like the fact he's [Obama] got this pretty wife. He's happily married. I like that.'"

6. I have in front of me a March 2008 magazine that includes a story on wedding planning. It is a straightforward how-to guide, with tips such as "Get organized," "Enlist help," and "Enjoy the day." What magazine was this in? GradPSYCH, a professional magazine for graduate students published by the American Psychological Association. I swear I am not making this up.

SO WHAT?

For those of you already set to pounce, let me concede your point: This is all small stuff.

1. Jack Cafferty reads lots of outrageous responses.

2. Most grown-ups know better than to believe everything they read in Time.

3. Maybe Jenna's single sister was thrilled to be exempt from the Pope-a-thon.

4. Perhaps Barack Obama did not mean to imply that he would be disappointed if his daughters stayed single.

5. Chris Matthews makes so many insensitive remarks that Media Matters keeps tabs on them.

6. Who cares if a professional magazine prints a story on wedding planning.

There are instances of singlism that are more serious than the ones I've described here. (I reviewed some of them in Chapter 12 of Singled Out.) Still, in its level of intensity, vitriol, and destructiveness, the discrimination faced by people who are single is not on a par with that faced by the targets of, say, racism or heterosexism.

Unlike the better-known isms, however, singlism is often practiced without apology or even awareness. Also, although singlism is not likely to be as scathing as racism, the steady drip, drip, drip of it could drive single people over the edge - if they were not so amazingly resilient.

It Takes a Single Person to Create a Village

Bella DePaulo — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:43:02 -0700

There are some studies you will probably never read about in the mainstream media. They may have been published in the most selective and prestigious professional journals. The findings may be important, even provocative. Still, they stay in their place, nestled in pages read only by people to whom phrases such as "ordinary least square regression" are, well, ordinary.

The problem is that the findings do not fit the conventional wisdom of our time. We have no mental hooks on which to hang them. Take, for instance, a study about single parenting and reading performance published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. The author, Hyunjoon Park, compared the reading scores of 15-year olds in single-parent vs 2 biological parent households, in five Asian countries. In only one of them, Japan, did the children in 2-parent families read significantly better than the children in single-parent families. In fact, in two of the countries, Thailand and Indonesia, the children from single-parent households were actually BETTER readers than the children from 2-parent households.

To many Americans, it seems nonsensical that children from single-parent families could ever outperform children from 2-parent families. After all, don't the children living with two parents have twice the love, attention, resources, and help with their homework as the children of single parents?

Traditional nuclear families have been so sentimentalized in American society that when we think of them, we immediately leap to a fantasy of two fully engaged and available adults who lavish their love and attention on one another and the children in a home free of anger, conflict, or recriminations.

In contrast, we imagine the children of single parents trudging home after school, latchkey in hand, glumly tossing a backpack into a tiny, wretched apartment. In the movie in our minds, the kids then plop on the couch to watch TV until a harried mom finally makes it home from work, way too exhausted and too poor to put a decent dinner on the table.

Both images are caricatures, and in my book, SINGLED OUT, I explain the many misrepresentations and misunderstandings that stand in the way of a more informed and enlightened view of different family forms. Here, I want to focus on just one myth about the children of single parents - that they have only one adult in their life who pays attention to them, cares about them, and loves them.

Park posed an intriguing explanation for why children of single parents are such good readers in Indonesia and Thailand - they have an extended family network of people who help them and care about them. Sociologists in the United States who have studied single mothers (such as Rosanna Hertz and Faith Ferguson) have also found that single parents are rarely raising their children single-handedly. Instead, they have a whole ensemble of friends, relatives, and neighbors who are invested in their lives and the lives of their children.

I've been thinking about these issues lately because of an e-mail I received from Paula Otero, who hosts "Women and Success," an online magazine and blog. Paula is a single woman with no children who would love to bring her 12-year old niece to work this Thursday (April 24), the annual "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work" day. She is a true believer in the importance of expanding children's horizons and in the power of mentoring. Paula also adores her niece, and believes the child would greatly appreciate and benefit from a day at work with her aunt.

The problem is that in Paula's workplace, only mothers and their daughters are welcome to participate in the day's activities. It is true that when the Ms. Foundation initiated the event in 1993, it was called "Take Our Daughters to Work." Since 1993, though, the program has been expanded to include boys as well.

Even more important - especially in a blog about Living Single - is this note that I found on the website of the Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Foundation:

"When we say ‘Our Daughters and Sons,' we mean more than our own children. [The Foundation] encourages workplaces and individuals to ensure all our nation's daughters and sons participate in the program by inviting children from housing authorities and shelters, nieces and nephews, neighbors and friends, and more, to join them."

Although I have been focusing on the children of single parents, it is not just those kids who are likely to benefit from the nurturing and attention and love of adults other than their parents. I, a lifelong single person, grew up in an Italian Catholic home with two parents who married in 1949 and stayed that way until my dad died more than forty years later. Every occasion, from Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter, through birthdays and First Holy Communions and Confirmations and graduations, was marked by a gathering of aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and neighbors and friends. (On New Years Eve, party hats were also included, as were rum cookies that were more rum than cookie.) I don't think it ever occurred to me that the sleepovers at the homes of favorite relatives - occasions that my three siblings and I found so exciting - were probably special events for our parents as well.

So this Thursday, if your own workplace planners have not yet caught up with the new American spirit, let them in on it (ever so politely, of course). Tell them that you value the contemporary version of the Day, in which all children (and not just biological offspring) are welcome at work, and all of the workers who love children (and not just the parents) are encouraged to bring a special little guest. Sometimes it takes a single person, without children of his or her own, to create a village.

One more thing. Let's not forget that there are many people, both single and coupled, who are not so enamored of children. In the spirit of Bill Maher, let me suggest a New Rule: You do not need to bring any children to work, and you only need to give that "oh, how cute!" look once, then you are covered for the entire day.

Dining Alone, PART 2: Here’s What People Really Do Think of You

Bella DePaulo — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:32:44 -0700

Thanks to all who predicted the results of the study that asked, "If you dine alone, what will people think of you?" A variety of suggestions were offered. My colleagues and I - before we actually conducted the study - thought all of your predictions seemed plausible. Well, all except one: the one that was correct! "Adora" nailed it when she said, "It is probably no big deal if you dine alone."

I don't mean that no one ever has a snide thought about a person who is dining solo. The shoppers who commented on our photos did have some unkind things to say about the solo diners, including the very remarks that some of you predicted. But, they also made many neutral and positive observations. Most importantly, the people who commented on the pictures were no more likely to say anything negative (and no less likely to say anything positive) when the person in the picture was dining solo than when the same person was with other people.

We looked at all sorts of factors to see if they mattered - for example, was the person in the picture a male or a female? A younger adult or an older one? Were the people making the comments male or female? Single or married? No matter what we included in the analyses, the answer was always the same - there were no consistent differences in how a person was judged depending on whether that person was dining solo vs. with one or more other people.

Let me explain. Some negative comments were made about the solo diners, as we anticipated. For example, people said things like, "He is lonely," "Doesn't have many friends," "She looks depressed."

But look at some of the other comments we got:

"Enjoying a few good peaceful moments."
"She just wanted to eat by herself."
"Wanted to relax."
"Traveling."
"He seems to be enjoying his dinner."
"Wanted time to ponder."
And my favorite: "He is secure."

For comparison, let me tell you about some of the comments that were made about the pictures that showed one man and one woman dining together. We expected those pictures to elicit mostly kind words. We did get some positive comments. For example, people said that the man was out to "dinner with his wife for fun;" or that the two are having a "fine, quiet conversation." Others said that "they are very close," or that "they enjoy spending time together."

But now look at some of the other comments that were made about the male-female pairs:

They went to dinner "to have a talk because their relationship needs some mending."
"She is upset."
"He thought he liked her."
They wanted to "get away from the children."
She went out to dinner with him "out of obligation - she's married to him."

We found the same mix of some positive, some negative, some neutral comments for all of the different sets of diners we studied - same-sex pairs, one person sitting across from a male and a female, or a male and a female on each side of the table.

Two of the people who commented on Part 1 of my post made an important observation. "Terry" and "Ladyexpat" said that by showing people photos of solo diners and asking for comments, we were creating a focus on the solo diners that may not occur naturally. Maybe when people go out to dinner, they just pay attention to their own dinner (or dinner companions), and hardly even notice the other people in the restaurant.

There is some great research relevant to Terry and Ladyexpat's point. I think that work may also help to explain why people are reluctant to go out to dinner on their own, even though they are probably not going to be judged any more or less harshly than if they were went out to dinner with other people.

The studies were conducted by Thomas Gilovich and his colleagues to document what they call "the spotlight effect" - "people's tendency to overestimate the extent to which their behavior and appearance are noticed and evaluated by others."

Here's an example of one of the studies. College students were assigned to wear a t-shirt with a picture of Barry Manilow - how embarrassing! Then they had to knock on a door of another room, where students were filling out a questionnaire, and speak briefly to the experimenter in that room. Subsequently, they were asked to estimate how many of the students had noticed that they were sporting a Barry Manilow t-shirt. They were far more mortified than they needed to be - only half as many students had noticed and remembered their t-shirt than they feared.

I'll end, as I began, with the words of "adora":

"I also used to think that if I dine alone, people will think I'm a loser - until I notice other people dining alone and I actually think they are very cool."

So here's to all the cool solo diners out there!

If You Dine Alone, What Will People Think of You? PART 1: See If You Can Predict the Results

Bella DePaulo — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:50:15 -0700

On a beautiful summer evening at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, back when I lived on the East Coast, I stopped for dinner at an outdoor café. My server lingered a while each time she appeared, offering conversation along with the refills of my iced tea. I wondered - did she think I was uncomfortable dining alone?

In fact, I was feeling serene. I had spent a busy, boisterous day with three guys I adore - one of my brothers and his two sons. They had already left. I wanted to stay and savor in solitude the warm breezes, fresh seafood, and the parade of people passing by.

It wasn't just my server who seemed surprised and a bit protective of her lone diner. The hostess who seated me also did the solo-diner double take, glancing an extra time or two to see whether there really was someone else with me, who had just wandered off for a moment. At least she did not ask the "just one?" question. (Nor did a spotlight follow me to my table, as happened to Steve Martin in The Lonely Guy.)

While people-watching, it struck me that no one else seemed to be at the Inner Harbor on their own. I observed intently for 20 minutes, and never spotted even one person who seemed to be there without another person or group alongside them. Wasn't there anyone else within driving distance of the Inner Harbor who would have enjoyed heading off on their own to saunter around on such a perfect evening?

I have always thought it odd that in a nation supposedly known for its rugged individualists and daring adventurers, so many people seem reluctant to venture on their own into safe and comfortable places such as restaurants and movie theaters. When I first looked for research on the topic, I didn't find much. There was a study published in 1981 that reported that people seem more distressed at the prospect of walking into a restaurant alone than walking into an empty room alone, staying home alone, or living alone.

Why the hesitation? The celebrated sociologist, Erving Goffman, offered one explanation: "To attend alone is to expose oneself as possibly not being able to muster up companionship."

Yeah, I know. You didn't need a sociologist to tell you that if you go out to dinner on your own, other people will think you are a loser.

I'm a social psychologist, though, and a numbers-loving one at that. No matter how strong my intuition may be, and how many others may seem to agree with me, I want to see the relevant research. What do other people really think when they see someone dining alone?

Because there were no relevant studies out there, I decided to do my own. My collaborators (Wendy Morris and Cathy Popp) and I took pictures of pairs of heterosexual couples dining together - one couple on each side of a table in a restaurant. Some of the couples were in their 20s or 30s, and others were a decade or two older.

Then we took each of the pictures and used some computer wizardry to make people disappear. Erase one of the men, and now a woman appears to be dining with a couple. Erase the other man, and she appears to be dining with another woman. Erase the other woman instead of the man, and she appears to be dining with a man. Erase all of the other people, and now she is dining alone. (We did the same thing with each of the diners - male and female, younger and older.)

We thought it was important to do the study this way so that each of the people we photographed (with their permission) would have the exact same posture and expression regardless of whether she or he appeared to be with other people or alone. If our intuitions were correct, the diners would be perceived (for example) as sadder when seated alone than with others - even though they actually had identical expressions each time.

We brought our pictures to a shopping mall, and asked adults to tell us why a designated person in the picture went out to dinner that evening. When the picture was of a person dining solo, we asked them to tell us why they thought the person went out to dinner alone.

Now we had hundreds of responses and comments made by the shoppers. What do you think they said? Focus especially on the solo diners. Can you guess what the shoppers said about the people who appeared to be dining on their own, compared to when the same people were pictured with others?

Do you think that particular categories of solo diners were judged more harshly than others? (For example, men vs women? Older vs younger?)

I'm stopping here. It's your turn. Offer your predictions, or share your own stories of dining solo. In my next post, I'll describe the results of the study.

The Marriage-Promotion Claim that Is Right – for All the Wrong Reasons

Bella DePaulo — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:03:07 -0700

Law professor Nancy Polikoff, author of the important new book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law, left this comment on one of my previous blogs:

Last week, I blogged about a bus shelter poster campaign in Washington, DC. (www.beyondstraightandgaymarriage.blogspot.com) The posters have a bride and a groom and a statement. This "marriage promotion" campaign comes from a group that received almost $5 million in GOVERNMENT funding in 2006. (The group also supports abstinence-only sex education.) One of the posters reads: "Married people earn more money." Can you tell us what's wrong with that statement as an encouragement to marry?

I've looked into all sorts of claims about the joys and rewards that will be yours if only you wed - for example, that getting married makes you happier, healthier, sexier, lengthens your life, and saves your children from the doom that would befall them if they were raised by a single parent. When I assessed these vaunted benefits of getting married for my book, Singled Out, I found that just about all of them were myths. The supposed "evidence" in support of most of these claims is typically misrepresented, exaggerated, or just not there.

Here's the exception. The link between getting married and having more money really is there - and for all the wrong reasons. People who marry are rewarded with a treasure trove of economic goodies withheld from people who stay single.

Consider, for example, the issue of such prominence in the Democratic presidential campaign: health insurance. In many workplaces, married employees can include their spouse on their health plan at a reduced rate. Their single co-workers - who may have been doing the same job at the same level of competence for the same number of years - cannot include another adult (such as a sibling, parent, or close friend) on their plan. Analogously, no other workers can include those single people on their plans. That amounts to unequal compensation for the same work.

Same for Social Security. After married workers die, the benefits they earned go to their spouse. The same benefits earned by single workers go back into the system. Singles cannot give their benefits to other people who are important to them, nor can other workers leave their Social Security benefits to adults who are single.

It is not even necessary to look at benefits to find workplace discrimination against people who are single. A stack of studies has shown that married men are paid more than single men - even when the two are comparable in their seniority and accomplishments. (The references are in Singled Out.) In fact, in one study of identical male twins, the married twin was paid an average of 26% more than the single twin.

There is a supposed "penalty" for getting married that may well be the most notorious of them all. You may even have it on your mind around this time - the purported "marriage penalty." Just how bad is it? If a single person's taxable income were exactly the same as that of a married couple filing jointly, how much more would the married couple pay in federal taxes? It differs at different levels of income, but one part of the answer never changes: It is the single person who ALWAYS pays more. That's a singles penalty, not a marriage penalty.

Those who fret about the "marriage penalty" are not comparing married couples to single people. They are comparing two kinds of couples: those who are married, and those who pool their income but are not married. Under some conditions, the couples who marry do pay more in federal taxes than the couples who do not. Still, getting married more often results in a perk than a penalty.

Income taxes are just one of the domains in which the federal government favors people who get married. There are many other tax advantages and legal protections. In fact, as of 2004, there were 1,138 federal provisions in which marital status was a factor in the allocation of benefits, rights, and privileges. That's just the feds - states can pile on their rewards as well.

The marketplace is more generous to married people, too. Whenever people who are married pay less per person than people who are single, they are being subsidized by the single people who are paying full price. The list of examples begins with car insurance, club memberships, and travel packages; continues through restaurant coupons and grocery discounts for those who buy the jumbo sizes; and never ends.

Adults can access all of these legal benefits and protections and all of the economic perks simply by getting married. No child-rearing needs to be involved. In fact, married people can behave badly toward their spouse, dishonor their vows, move into a hotel room, and still remain recipients of the government's largesse.

Back to those posters that Professor Polikoff mentioned. "Married people earn more money," they claim. (The money is not really "earned," but never mind.) So why not get married for the money?

Remember that the posters are in bus shelters, not yacht clubs. The people who are targeted by the marriage-promotion campaigns are primarily those who are poor. Unwed mothers are of particular interest to the leaders of the marriage movement. So, "Is Marriage a Panacea?" That was the question posed by a study published in the journal Social Problems in 2003. The researchers found that unwed mothers from economically disadvantaged backgrounds who married did in fact, on the average, do better financially - but only if they stayed married. To quote the authors, "for women who marry, but later divorce, poverty rates exceed those of never-married women."

Now, finally, for the psychology. I'm no sappy romantic, but seriously - do you really want to marry for money?

Suppose you do. Ethics and values and fairness aside, would there be anything wrong with that?

Psychology students and fans may be familiar with a simple study from long ago, one that touched off decades of intriguing research. The participants in the study were children who loved playing with magic markers. Some of the kids (randomly assigned) were rewarded for doing what they already loved to do; the others were not. The rewarded children subsequently liked playing with the markers less than they had before! When the kids saw their drawing as something they did in order to get rewarded, their intrinsic motivation was undermined.

What if adults come to see the act of getting married as something to do in order to get more money? That's what the marriage-promotion posters seem, in a way, to be suggesting. Would the couples come to love one another less than if they had not been tempted by the promise of financial gains? Fortunately, scientists do not set ethics and values and fairness aside, so the relevant experimental research will never will be done. All we can do is guess. What do you think would be the consequences of marrying for money?

Today’s Singles-Bashing Question: “Does Marriage Make You Smarter?”

Bella DePaulo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:14:28 -0700

A few days ago, my inbox lit up with e-mails from brilliant single people alerting me to the latest outbreak of singlism in the media - the rash of stories suggesting that if you want lower blood pressure, you should "walk down the aisle." After reading the original research report, I learned that this claim (like so many of the other matrimaniacal "findings" that I investigated for my book, Singled Out) was more fictitious than real. I wrote about it here.

I was headed happily back to the work that I had set aside, when my inbox again began emitting distress calls. "Matrimania jumps on the neurobabble bandwagon!" one of them declared. I followed a link and ended up at the MSNBC.com website where the taunting question about marriage and intelligence appeared. The story was kind of dopey and vacuous, so I searched for the original article in Prevention magazine. That version added a subheading in response to the question, "Does Marriage Make You Smarter?": "The latest science says: I do." [Grammatically, this sounds a bit like Stephen Colbert's book title, I Am America (And So Can You!), but I digress.]

Beyond the spoiler subheading, the Prevention article was identical to the one posted on the MSNBC website. How many people were in the study? No indication. Who were they? Doesn't say. To whom were the married people (who ostensibly got smarter) compared? Did the research follow people who were single and then got married to see if they did in fact get smarter after they married? What was the measure of intelligence?

There were no answers to any of these questions. Instead, we get a story that starts with the author waxing poetic about his wife. He's smitten with her, he says, because "she is devoted to the pursuit of knowledge" - everything from "interior design to 18th-century epic poetry and primitive art." (If you were to observe all marriages, do you think more of them would resemble this one or the TV union of Edith and Archie Bunker?)

The only "evidence" described in support of the claim that marriage makes you smarter was this one sentence: "one area of the brain that lights up in these later stages of love is the cortex, the same place where information is stored and rational decisions are made."

Unconvinced? Then you are probably single - and stupid!

I don't know of any study that measured intelligence over time as single people married, to see whether they really did become smarter. The closest I can come to some relevant research is a study in which intelligence was measured during high school, and the students' marital status was recorded for the subsequent 36 years.

The author, Nadine Marks, had data from more than 10,000 students who graduated from high schools in Wisconsin in 1957. When she looked at their marital status around age 54, she found that for the women (but not the men), those who were married were less intelligent than those who were divorced or separated or had always been single.

Oh, and by the way, the same study of thousands of people also looked at health. There was no disadvantage for single women or men.

How about some headlines about that study?

Are Singles Doomed to High Blood Pressure? Only If They Read the Media Reports of the Latest Study

Bella DePaulo — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:40:56 -0700

Have you heard the one about marital status and blood pressure? The media has been abuzz about a study on that topic released a few days ago. The research has been featured on Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, in an Associated Press report, and many other places.

HERE ARE THE CLAIMS MADE IN THE MEDIA

I typed a few key words into Google to get a sense of the headlines. Here are a few:

1. "Happily married have lower blood pressure than singles."
2. "Marriage may lower blood pressure."
3. "Walk down the aisle for lower blood pressure, but be happy!"
4. "A happy marriage leads to low blood pressure."
5. "Happily marrieds have lower blood pressure than social singles."

Exhibit #6 comes from a pro-marriage listserv. The moderator introduced the study by noting, "This research is all the more reason to help couples learn how to get married..."

For years, I have been examining claims about the links between getting married and getting healthy. (See Chapter 2 of my book, Singled Out.) My approach is apparently different than that of many reporters: I actually go to the original journal article and read what the study really did show. Time and again, the results that make it into the media are a biased version of the actual results of the research, and in just about every instance, they are biased toward making married people look better and single people look worse.

I'll explain how that has happened with this particular study. Sometimes, though, you need look no further than the headline to realize that something is amiss. Take the very first headline, for example: "Happily married have lower blood pressure than singles." The claim is that if you compare only those married people who are happily married, to all singles (regardless of their happiness or anything else), the married people seem healthier.

HERE ARE THE ACTUAL RESULTS

Here's what I learned about the study from reading the original journal article:

Adults from the Provo, Utah community (mostly white) agreed to wear a blood pressure monitor for 24 hours. The married group was comprised of 204 heterosexuals. The 99 singles included 12 who were divorced and 1 who was widowed; the others had always been single.

From headlines such as "Marriage may lower blood pressure," you might guess that when blood pressure was averaged across the 24 hours of the study, the married people would have lower blood pressure than the singles. You would, however, be wrong. There were NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES in blood pressure between the married people and the single people.

Next, the authors looked at people's blood pressure only while they were awake. Maybe those waking hours, when married participants may have actually be interacting with their spouses, are the times when they look healthier than single people. Wrong again. There were NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES in blood pressure between the married people and the single people during waking hours.

What's left is blood pressure while sleeping. The authors looked at how much each person's blood pressure decreased while sleeping compared to when the person was awake. The married people had a greater reduction in blood pressure (not necessarily the same as a lower level of blood pressure), by about 3 points, than single people.

That is the key finding that you have been hearing all about: Married people look better than single people only if you compare reductions in blood pressure when the participants are unconscious.

I'm not saying that "nocturnal dips" are unimportant. But really, when you read those headlines, is that what you thought you were learning?

But suppose, hypothetically, that the results had been much stronger. Imagine that the married people had much lower blood pressure than the single people all day and all night. Would it then be okay to say that if you want to have lower blood pressure, you should get married?

Not on the basis of this study. Anyone who has taken a course in psychology or research methodology probably knows why. If married people differ from single people in blood pressure (or anything else), you cannot know, on the basis of this sort of study, whether they differ BECAUSE they are married. Maybe the people who got married already had lower blood pressure even before they married, and getting married made no difference.

Methodologically, there is a great way to figure out whether getting married helps your blood pressure. Unfortunately, it is unethical. You would have to assign people at random to get married or stay single.

The next best thing is to follow people over time. Richard Lucas and his colleagues have done this in a study of happiness that has been ongoing for at least 18 years. They found that people who got married and stayed married throughout the course of the study experienced a small increase in happiness around the time of the wedding. Then they went back to being as happy or as unhappy as they were when they were single. The people who married and eventually divorced did not even get the benefit of a honeymoon effect; they were already becoming less happy, not more so, as their wedding day approached.

There is no comparable study of changes in blood pressure as people transition from being single to being married (or from being married to being divorced or widowed).

WHAT'S WITH THE "HAPPILY MARRIED"?

I've already made fun of the headline claiming that happily married people have lower blood pressure than single people (whether happy or unhappy). The happy qualification covers another finding that some of the reports did mention: Unhappily married people had worse blood pressure readings across the 24-hrs than did the single people. They also had higher blood pressure during the day. Their "nocturnal dips" were not any different.

Hence, some main headings (e.g., "Good marriage equals good blood pressure") were qualified by a subheading: "Bad marriage worse than being single."

Fair is fair. The blood pressure of unhappy married people should be compared to the blood pressure of unhappy single people.

WHAT ABOUT THOSE "SOCIAL SINGLES"?

Headline #5, "Happily marrieds have lower blood pressure than social singles," introduces another factor - whether singles are "social" or not. The title of the published article poses the question, "Is there something unique about marriage?" The press release from Brigham Young University stated that "Having supportive friends did not translate into improved blood pressure for singles or unhappily marrieds." What that summary suggests is that even if you are single and you have supportive friends, you are still doomed to your non-dippy blood pressure.

Now once again, let me tell you what I read in the actual journal article. The measure of "supportive friends" was a 40-item scale. It consists of 10 items measuring your access to tangible, material help (sample item: "If for some reason I were put in jail, there is someone I could call to bail me out"); 10 items measuring whether you have people with whom you can discuss your problems (sample item: "There is really no one I can trust to give me good financial advice"); 10 items measuring whether you have people you can do things with (sample item: "Most people I know don't enjoy the same things I do"); and 10 items measuring your self-esteem (sample item: "I am able to do things as well as most other people").

Single people who had more access to support (as measured by this scale), compared to married people who had more access to support (again, as measured by this scale), had no better blood pressure readings than those who had less access to support. That's the basis for the conclusion that "there [is] something unique about marriage."

Here is the question that the study did NOT address: If you are single, and you have a close friend or a sibling or anyone else who is important to you (or if you have the number of close relationships and the degree of closeness that you desire), then how does your blood pressure compare to a married person's?

CONCLUSION

If you are single, I don't think you should decide to get married in order to lower your blood pressure. Just relax and get a good night's sleep.

Unfortunately, that probably won't work for me. I'm single, and media reports like these make my blood boil.

Living Single: It Is How We Spend the Better Part of Our Adult Lives

Bella DePaulo — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:26:21 -0700

Welcome to the Living Single blog! This is my first post, so let me tell you a bit about myself and what you can expect to find in this space.

I'm 54-years old and I've been living single my entire life. So I have quite a lot of experience in the practice of singlehood. Over the past decade or so, I've also become a scholar of the single life.

I started taking mental notes on what it means to be single long before I decided to approach the topic scientifically. Probably my most jarring life transition was going from graduate school, where just about all of my friends were single, to my first job as an Assistant Professor, in 1979, in a psychology department in which just about all of my colleagues were institutionalized (i.e., married) or acting as if they were.

Now, nearly three decades later, fewer single people will find themselves "singled out" in their work or social environments. Each new Census Bureau report points to a growing number of single people in the population. There are now about 92 million Americans, 18 or older, who are divorced, widowed, or have always been single. That's about 42% of the adult population. (Some estimates are even higher. A New York Times story set the blogosphere ablaze with its headline claiming that 51% of women are living without a spouse.)

There are now fewer households consisting of mom, dad, and the kids than of people living solo. And here's my favorite statistic: Americans now spend more years of their adult lives unmarried than married.

What it means to be single has changed dramatically over the decades, especially for women. In 1956, when the age at which Americans first married was as young as it has ever been, and when nearly everyone married at some point in their lives, there was a big bright line separating married life from single life. There were fewer job opportunities for women than there are now, and especially fewer with decent pay. The Food and Drug Administration had not yet approved the pill as a safe form of birth control. Women who had sex or children outside of marriage were stigmatized, and the children of single mothers were not fully protected under the law. In the mid-20th century, the reproductive science that we now take for granted could only be imagined.

Today, many women are no longer tethered to men for economic life support. They can, if they have the resources and the inclination, have sex without having children, and children without having sex. Marriage is not essential to any of it. Increasingly, contemporary singles are no longer waiting to find The One before buying homes, traveling the world, or pursuing their passions.

Our perceptions of people who are single, though, have not kept up with their rapidly changing place in society. Stereotypes persist. As I discovered in my own studies, and while researching my book, Singled Out, there are important ways in which singles are stigmatized and marginalized. For example, in many workplaces, they receive less compensation than their married co-workers for doing the same job. (This is especially true for single men.) Singles also have fewer legal benefits and protections than married people do.

As I was learning about the ways in which singles are targets of stereotyping and discrimination, I was also noticing headlines in the media proclaiming that getting married makes people happier and healthier. I thought there was an obvious story to be told: Getting married makes people happier and healthier in part because it means escaping the stigma of singlehood.

I decided to look closely at the studies behind the headlines, wondering whether there might be some interesting qualifications (for example, does getting married improve the health or happiness of some people more than others?). I was stunned at what I found. When I examined the data reported in the original journal articles, I discovered that the media claims about the benefits of getting married were grossly exaggerated or just plain wrong. (So were the reports of the benefits for children of having two married parents rather than a single parent.)

The first few times, I thought the studies I was finding were the exceptions. I figured that as I kept reading, I would find the research showing that getting married transforms miserable and sickly single people into blissful and healthy married couples. That has not happened. The media stories extolling marriage keep on coming, but it is a rare headline that is an accurate summary of what the relevant study really did show. (See, for example, the stories in the news yesterday about the links between marital status and blood pressure. I'll probably write more about that in a subsequent post.)

Once I realized that I was not the only happy single person, and that getting married does not typically result in remarkable or enduring improvements in happiness or health, I had to rethink what it means to live single in contemporary American society. The new, data-based version of the story that was taking shape in my mind was far more interesting than the one I envisioned from the headlines. In the new version, singles are stereotyped, stigmatized, and ignored, BUT they still live happily ever after! How can that be? What is enriching and fulfilling in the lives of people who are single? What do our negative cultural stereotypes miss about the real lives of single people? Those are some of the key questions I addressed in my book, Singled Out, and they will motivate some of what I write here.

A single person's view of the world can raise some interesting challenges to the conventional wisdom. Think back to the early days of the 2008 Presidential campaign, when each side had a long lineup of candidates. On the Republican end were Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, Fred Thompson, and Tommy Thompson. The Democratic dance card featured Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. A quick glance at all the Republicans standing together onstage, compared to the Democrats, suggested a stark difference that became the common knowledge: The Republicans were all white men of a certain age, and the Democrats were diverse.

When I looked at all the candidates on both sides, though, I thought there was an important way in which they were all the same: They were all married.

Does that matter, and if so, how? What, if anything, does it say about 21st century America?

Stay tuned. And let me know if there are particular questions or issues about Living Single that you would especially like me to address.