A new study, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family reveals that married couples experience few advantages for psychological well-being, health, or social ties compared to unmarried couples who live together. While both marriage and cohabitation provide benefits over being single, these reduce over time following a honeymoon period.
“Marriage has long been an important social institution, but in recent decades western societies have experienced increases in cohabitation, before or instead of marriage, and increases in children born outside of marriage,” said Dr Kelly Musick, Associate Professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology. “These changes have blurred the boundaries of marriage, leading to questions about what difference marriage makes in comparison to alternatives.”
Previous research has sought to prove a link between marriage and well-being, but many studies compared marriage to being single, or compared marriages and cohabitations at a single point in time. This study compares marriage to cohabitation while using a fixed-effects approach that focuses on what changes when single men and women move into marriage or cohabitation and the extent to which any effects of marriage and cohabitation persist over time. [continue reading…]
Millions of human interactions were assessed during the study which included actions such as communication, founding and ending friendships, trading goods, sleeping, moving, however also starting hostilities, attacks and punishment. The game does not suggest any rules and everyone can live with their avatar (i.e. with their “game character” in the virtual world) as they choose. “And the result of this is not anarchy”, says Thurner. “The participants organise themselves as a social group with good intents. Almost all the actions are positive.”
“Exactly how people tick”
The interactions were fed into an “alphabet” by the researchers, “similar to how the genetic code of DNA was decoded 15 years ago”, says Thurner. “From this we get a pattern which reflects how people tick”. However, there is quite a high potential for aggression: so, for example, if a negative action is inflicted, the probability that the player will subsequently also act aggressively shoots up more than tenfold, even to about 30 percent. [continue reading…]
Most of us know that we need vitamin D for strong bones. Now it appears researchers have identified a relationship between vitamin D levels and an individual’s risk of depression.
The finding comes from a four-year cross-sectional study of more than 12,000 participants conducted by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who reported their findings in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Depression was assessed with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Data pointed to a decreased risk of current depression in those with the highest vitamin D levels. The association was strongest in subjects with a history of depression. The researchers urge assessment of vitamin D levels in primary care patients who have a history of depression.
Depression isn’t the only mental illness associated with vitamin D levels. Psychiatric News has reported on a link between vitamin D levels in newborns and risk of developing schizophrenia. Click here to read that article.
A new study, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family reveals that married couples experience few advantages for psychological well-being, health, or social ties compared to unmarried couples who live together. While both marriage and cohabitation provide benefits over being single, these reduce over time following a honeymoon period.
