Gut reaction could foretell marriage satisfaction

Unconscious gut reactions may predict happy, and not-so-happy, marriages, a new study suggests.

In an experiment, researchers flashed the faces of participants’ spouses and asked the newlyweds to quickly, and unconsciously, determine if words such as awesome or horrible were positive or negative. Individuals who responded the quickest to positive words after seeing a picture of their spouse were happier over the 4-year-study period.

Questionnaires asking about couples’ conscious attitudes were not accurate predictors of the happiness of the pairs, but people’s automatic responses could foretell the course of the couple’s relationship, the team reports November 29 in Science.

Ashley Yeager is the associate news editor at Science News. She has worked at The Scientist, the Simons Foundation, Duke University and the W.M. Keck Observatory, and was the web producer for Science News from 2013 to 2015. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT.

More Stories from Science News on Psychology

From the Nature Index

Paid Content