Sleep is a precious commodity that is often sacrificed by the pace of modern life and the compromises that go with it.  Loss of sleep can cause a number of neurochemical and physical changes in the brain and, as a stressor, can dysregulate physiological processes that affect health and well-being, including increased incidence of obesity.   Loss of sleep can increase overeating of comfort food, impair memory and decision making and depress mood.  Current busy lifestyles, including less sleep time, contribute to  increases in modern-day illnesses like diabetes, depression and cardiovascular disease.  One contributing factor is likely to be increases in  loneliness and a failure to make and/or maintain meaningful social relationships.

Recent research by Elliot Friedman and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin has shown that poor social connectedness is associated with elevated levels  of an inflammatory cytokine, interleukin 6, which is a chemical signal of the immune defense system of the body that, on the one hand, helps activate immune defense responses but which, on the negative side, is also chronically elevated in many of the disorders of modern life such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, degenerative brain diseases and depression.  Elevated levels of these cytokines may affect the brain, since a recent study by Anna Marsland and coworkers at the University of Pittsburgh has shown that elevated levels of an inflammatory cytokine, Interleukin-6, are associated with smaller volume of a brain structure, the hippocampus, that is essential for key aspects of memory formation, as well as mood regulation.

In the Friedman study,  poor sleep was also associated with elevated levels of interleukin 6.  Sleep is believed to be a brain state during which consolidation of memories is taking place.  For example, during this time, the brain solidifies memories of where we were and what we were doing when something of importance happened.  Sleep deprivation is a stressor that increases the homeostatic drive to sleep, and  sleep reduces interleukin 6 and replenishes stores of energy in the form of glycogen in the brain that are depleted by lack of sleep.    

The long-term consequences of sleep deprivation and disruption of our day-night rhythm by shift work and jet lag constitute a form of chronic stress (also called “allostatic load”) – with physiologic imbalances involving hypertension, reduced parasympathetic tone, increased inflammatory cytokines, increased oxidative stress, and increased evening cortisol and insulin, all of which are signs that the body is out of balance.  Reduced sleep is associated with increased risk for obesity, which also means increased chances of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.  Indeed, shorter sleep times, which are progressively part of the lives of Americans and other nationalities, have been associated with increased obesity.

As a result of the common type of  diabetes (called Type 2 diabetes) that is increasingly prevalent in many societies,  there is also poorer cognitive function, as well as increased risk for depression and increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Disruptions of our biological clocks that synchronize us with the light:dark cycle, is a broader aspect of the problem of sleep disruption. Shift work and jet lag are two common practices that have measurable effects on the brain and body. Long distance air travel with short turnaround has been reported to be associated with smaller volume of the temporal lobe, which includes the hippocampus, and impaired performance on a visual-spatial cognitive task.

 As Americans have become disconnected from core families and communities to pursue their lives and careers, often in places distant from their birthplaces, one of the unintended consequences is loneliness and isolation. These have been described first by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone and very recently by Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz in their book, The Lonely American. Indeed, the fast pace of life, job and career pressures and long working hours often leads to a need for privacy, followed by a sense of exclusion and loneliness and leads to reduced time for social interactions with friends and the building of healthy relationships. Moreover, for those who have caregiving responsibilities, there is chronic stress that has consequences for the brain and body and that also can preclude social interactions outside the home.

 The good news is that positive relationships and social networks buffer against stressors, such as sleep deprivation, by providing an emotional outlet and other types of social support, thereby reducing the burden of chronic stress and allostatic load from such common stressors as work and caregiving. Better sleep is one of the consequences of improved mood and reduced anxiety. Volunteer programs such as the Experience Corps, provide opportunities for social interactions outside of the home and also give meaning and purpose in life for participants, and they have been shown to benefit the physical and mental health of those who are involved in the program.

Further Reading:

 Arvanitakis Z, Wilson RS, Bienias JL, Evans DA, Bennett DA (2004) Diabetes mellitus and risk of Alzheimer disease and decline in cognitive function. Arch. Neurol. 61:661-666.

Atkinson G, Davenne D (2007) Relationships between sleep, physical activity and human health. Physiol. & Behav. 90:229-236.

Cho K (2001) Chronic ‘jet lag’ produces temporal lobe atrophy and spatial cognitive deficits. Nature Neurosci. 4:567-568.

Fried LP, Carlson MC, Freedman M, Frick KD, Glass TA, Hill J, McGill S, Rebok GW, Seeman T, Tielsch J, Wasik BA, Zeger S (2004) A social model for health promotion for an aging population: Initial evidence on the experience corps model. J. Urban Health: Bull NY Acad. Med. 81:64-78.

Friedman EM, Hayney MS, Love GD, Urry HL, Rosenkranz MA, Davidson RJ, Singer BH, Ryff CD (2005) Social relationships, sleep quality, and interleukin-6 in aging women. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102:18757-18762.

Gais S, Born J (2004) Declarative memory consolidation: Mechanisms acting during human sleep. Learning & Memory 11:679-685.

Gangwisch JE, Malaspina D, Boden-Albala B, Heymsfield SB (2005) Inadequate sleep as a risk factor for obesity: analyses of the NHANES I. Sleep 28:1289-1296.

Hendrickx H, McEwen BS, van der Ouderaa F (2005) Metabolism, mood and cognition in aging: The importance of lifestyle and dietary intervention. Neurobiol. Aging 26S:S1-S5.

Marsland AL, Gianaros PJ, Abramowitch SM, Manuck SB, Hariri AR (2008) Interleukin-6 covaries inversely with hippocampal grey matter volume in middle-aged adults. Biol. Psychiat. 64:484-490.

McEwen BS (1998) Protective and Damaging Effects of Stress Mediators. New England J.Med. 338:171-179.

McEwen BS (2007) Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: Central role of the brain. Physiol. Rev. 87:873-904.

Olds J, Schwartz RS. The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the 21^st Century Beacon Press, Boston, 1998.

Putnam RD. Bowling Along: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Seeman TE, Singer BH, Ryff CD, Dienberg G, Levy-Storms L (2002) Social relationships, gender, and allostatic load across two age cohorts. Psychosom. Med. 64:395-406.

Tasali E, Leproult R, Ehrmann DA, Van Cauter E (2008) Slow-wave sleep and the risk of type 2 diabetes in humans. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 105:1044-1049.

Tsuno N, Besset A, Ritchie K (2005) Sleep and depression. J. Clin. Psychiat. 66:1254-1269.

Most people want to have a warm, loving, sexually satisfying relationship with their spouse or partner throughout their lives. And many couples manage to achieve this goal. But life presents challenges to healthy sexuality as people—and couples—age. And these challenges affect women and men differently, but since most couples have one of each, they face many of the same issues eventually.

Recently, the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, which I head, interviewed over 3000 men and women between the ages of 57 and 85 as part of a study of intimacy and health. We spoke to people across the United States, in their homes. As part of this study we asked our participants in some detail about their sex lives. Here is what we learned from their answers.

The biggest challenge to sexual function and health in later life comes from the illness, disease and declines in functioning that often appear with age. The figure below shows the proportion of men and women with a spouse or romantic partner who had sex in the past year. The blue lines show the proportion for men, the red lines show the proportion of women. The solid blue lines shows the proportion of married or romantically attached men in excellent or very good health who had sex, for those ages 57 to 85 years old. Even among this privileged group by the time they are 85, most are not having sex. For those in worse health, this retreat from sex happens earlier; among men in good health—the dashed blue line—half are sexually inactive by their late 70s. Married men in fair or poor health are about equally likely to be having as not having sex by about their early 70s.

The situation for women is bleaker, as this figure shows. Married or partnered women in the best health—the solid red line—have about a 50-50 chance of any sex life at all until their late 70s, which is about the same as men in fair to middling health. But women in the worse health—the dotted red line—become sexually inactive in their late 60s, on average.

Singlehood and Gender

These figures tell only part of the story, the part for men and women with a spouse or romantic partner. But marriage vows often include a pledge “til death do us part”, an expected end to a successful relationship. When death parts men or women from their marriage partner, it usually separates them from their only sexual partner; very few widowed men or women have sex with someone to whom they are not married or romantically connected.

This figure shows the proportion of men and women who have a spouse or romantic partner at various ages. Again, we see these for people in the best health, middling health and not-so-good health.

Among men in the best health, more than 8 in 10 still have a wife or partner in their 80s; compare this to more like 3 in 10 of healthy women the same age. The gender gap in partnership is present by the mid-50s but turns into a yawning chasm by the mid-70s. By about 75 most women no longer have a spouse or partner.

Clearly, men are advantaged in the quest to live to the end with a partner, because men tend to marry younger women and because at any age, men are more likely to have died; til death do us part most often means until the man dies.

Sex over Time – the Bad and Good

For those who are married or partnered at older ages, what are the chances of having a satisfying sex life? We asked people whether over the last year they had any of the following symptoms lasting a few months or more, including a lack of interest in sex, difficulty achieving or maintaining an erection (for men), difficulty with lubrication (for women), lack of pleasure from sex, climaxing too quickly (for men), inability to climax, pain during sex, or anxiety about performance. About half of all the people who we talked to said they had at least one sexual problem that bothered them and almost a third reported having two or more. The most common problem for men was erectile dysfunction. The most common problem for women was lack of interest.

For the most part, there is no increase in reports of sexual problems, like pain or lack of interest in sex, with age for either men or women who remain partnered and sexually active. The single exception is men’s erectile dysfunction, which increases with age. In fact, older sexually active women were less likely than younger women (remember the youngest were 57) to complain of pain during sex and less likely to complain of lack of interest. The sexually-active septuagenarians were just as satisfied with their sex lives as those three decades younger!

Predictors of Sexual Problems

The strongest predictors of sexual problems seem to be poor mental health and dissatisfaction with one’s relationship. The men and women most likely to report that they lacked interest in sex for several months or more over the last year tend to show relatively high levels of anxiety, stress, and depressive symptoms. Depressed men were more likely to have had erectile dysfunction and difficulty achieving orgasm. Women with poor mental health were also much more likely to say they were unable to achieve orgasm and lacked pleasure from sex. And both men and women who were dissatisfied with their relationship more often lacked interest in sex or found it not pleasurable.

Some of the challenges to an active, healthy sex life during middle age and later happen to many couples. Chances are that at least one member of the couple will develop an illness or disability at some point in later life.

Our research suggests that physical health challenges can be met if men and women maintain their mental health. Although depression, anxiety and stress are common, they are also amenable to treatment. And for those who maintain sexual activity well into their golden years, the experiences are just as rewarding.

What is social neuroscience?

 We like to think of ourselves as mythic individualists, but humans are fundamentally a social species. As a social species, we create emergent organizations beyond the individual – structures that range from dyads, families, and groups to cities, civilizations, and cultures. These emergent structures evolved hand in hand with neural and hormonal mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behaviors helped these organisms survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long that they too survived to reproduce. Social neuroscience represents an interdisciplinary approach devoted to understanding how biological systems implement social processes and behavior and to using biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior.

Please tell us about the research you conducted for your book, Loneliness.

To examine the role of the social world on neural, hormonal, and genetic mechanisms, we have compared the differences between individuals who are or feel socially isolated from those who do not. A wide variety of differences have been documented in socially isolated versus socially housed animals, including decreased lifespan in the Drosophilia melanogaster (fruit fly) to obesity and Type 2 diabetes in mice. Human studies have similarly found social isolation to be associated with higher rates of morbidity and mortality.

Our own research has focused on analyses including brain imaging, autonomic and neuroendocrine assays, gene transcript analyses, twin studies, sleep studies, and various psychological and behavioral analyses. We have drawn upon a large number of cross-sectional studies of lonely young and older adults; various experimental studies in which we manipulate loneliness; longitudinal studies of twins and their families; and longitudinal studies of middle-aged and older adults in Chicago. As we discuss in our book, one of the surprising early findings was that experimentally manipulating loneliness produced changes in a wide variety of other psychological and behavioral states, including self-esteem, depressive mood, anxiety, hostility, shyness, and social skills, that were as dramatic as those we observed in cross sectional studies. Our longitudinal studies have confirmed that loneliness appears to cause a wide variety of potentially deleterious effects on neural, hormonal, and genetic mechanisms as well as on health, cognition, and well being.

How does loneliness differ from physical isolation or solitude?

Physical isolation can contribute to feelings of loneliness, but people can be lonely in a marriage, family, or crowd. Loneliness is the pain you feel when your need for connection isn’t being met, and you can feel that anywhere—even when surrounded by friends or family. What matters is how you feel about it, your subjective response. The pain of being alone is termed loneliness, whereas the bliss of being alone is termed solitude. We and others have found that it is not the number of friends or contact that predicts loneliness, it is the quality of those relationships.

Can people be surrounded by family and friends and have a very active social life and still be lonely?

 Yes, for instance, freshman when they arrive at college are sharing housing and are surrounded by hundreds of other students, yet on average their feelings of loneliness are heightened by the fact that they have severed their normal ties with friends and family, in many instances for the first time in their lives. Similarly, a bereaved spouse may suffer the searing pain of loneliness despite the presence of more supportive family and friends than typically are around them. But it does not require a life-changing event to find oneself lonely in the midst of an active social life. The frenetic pace with which many in contemporary society move from work to family obligations to social activities can leave one feeling at a loss for any meaningful human contact.

About a quarter century ago, when Americans in a national survey were asked the number of confidants they had, the most frequent response was three. This question was asked again a few years ago, and the most frequent response was zero. This finding is consistent with the robust finding that it is the quality of our social relationships, not the quantity, which is an essential part of what it takes for us to be healthy and happy.

Where was the science of loneliness when you entered the field? How is your view different?

 The science previously tended to characterize loneliness as an aversive state with no redeeming features, and as a state barely different from general negativity or depressed mood. Our research suggests a very different depiction of loneliness. We have adopted the perspective of loneliness as a biological construct, a state that has evolved as a signal to change behavior – very much like hunger, thirst, or physical pain – that serves to help one avoid damage and promote the transmission of genes to the gene pool. In the case of loneliness, the signal is a prompt to renew the connections we need to survive and prosper.

Do you think that American culture influences people to devalue human connection and community?

 Our culture stands on both sides of this continuum. We espouse that “united we stand, divided we fall,” and we celebrate the achievements of the solitary individual. Humans are fundamentally social creatures, however, and our strength and considerable capacity as a species comes from our collective connectedness, not our individual might.

What role did loneliness play from an evolutionary perspective?

 Our work with brain scans, physiological markers, and heritability analyses has allowed us to put loneliness into an evolutionary context that underscores its utility. Early in our history as a species, we survived and prospered only by banding together—in couples, in families, in tribes—to provide mutual protection and assistance. Loneliness evolved like any other form of pain. As noted above, this was a prompt to renew the connections we needed to insure survival and to promote social trust, cohesiveness, and collective action. Hunger, if ignored, can be followed by ravaging effects on the brain and biology, ultimately reducing a person’s ability in the wild to find and capture food. Loneliness, too, if ignored can have damaging effects that make it more difficult for an individual to escape its grips. Moreover, when offspring have long periods of abject dependency, simply bearing offspring is not sufficient to ensure one’s genes make it into the gene pool. One must also care enough about these offspring to care and nurture them so that they too live long enough to reproduce.  Thus, loneliness is a prompt to reconnect with others to protect our survival and the survival and perpetuation of our genes.

 Is there a genetic variation among individuals in their need for social connection?

 Yes, loneliness is about 50% heritable, but this does not mean loneliness is determined by genes. An equal amount is due to situational factors. What appears to be heritable is the intensity of pain felt when one feels socially isolated. Being sensitive or insensitive are each fine, but what is important is to create a social environment that matches one’s predisposition toward feeling social pain. If one is especially sensitive, then it may benefit one’s health and well being to prioritize the development and maintenance of a few high quality relationships.

Many social scientists and psychologists compare the human brain to an intricate, solitary computer and to humans as being driven primarily by ruthless competition and narrow self-interest. Does your research support this theory?

The dominant metaphor for the scientific study of the human mind during the latter half of the 20^th century has been the computer – a solitary device with massive information processing capacities. Our studies of loneliness left us unsatisfied with this metaphor. Computers today are massively interconnected devices with capacities that extend far beyond the resident hardware and software of a solitary computer.

It became apparent to us that the telereceptors (e.g., eyes, ears) of the human brain have provided wireless broadband interconnectivity to humans for millennia. Just as computers have capacities and processes that are transduced through but extend far beyond the hardware of a single computer, the human brain has evolved to promote social and cultural capacities and processes that are transduced through but that extend far beyond a solitary brain.

To understand the full capacity of humans, one needs to appreciate not only the memory and computational power of the brain but its capacity for representing, understanding, and connecting with other individuals. That is, one needs to recognize that we have evolved a powerful, meaning-making social brain. This social brain is not always a benevolent brain, however. Our research certainly says humans have the capacity to be driven by ruthless competition and narrow self-interests, but it also shows that we have an additional, wondrous capacity to cooperate, care about others as well as oneself, and compete in fair and mutually beneficial ways. As a society, it may be important to find ways to promote the latter over the former in individuals. 

You argue that loneliness can have serious physiological consequences. Could you please share your research on this issue?

 As we discuss in our book, loneliness can cause:

        •       Increased vascular resistance, or resistance to blood flow throughout the body

•          Elevated blood pressure as one ages

•          Increased rises in the stress hormone, cortisol, in the morning and heightened hypothalamic pituitary adrenocortical activity

•          Under-expression of genes bearing anti-inflammatory glucocorticoid response elements (GREs) and over-expression of genes bearing response elements for pro-inflammatory NF-κB/Rel transcription factors – that is, altered gene expressions in immune cells

•          Less salubrious sleep

•          Higher levels of depressive symptoms and lower life satisfaction

•          Poorer executive function

•          Poorer health behaviors such as exercise

•          Brain circuitry indicative of less rewarding in response to pleasant social stimuli, and more attention and less perspective taking in response to unpleasant social stimuli

 In addition, in our book, we review evidence that loneliness is associated with:

• Progression of Alzheimer’s Disease

• Obesity

• Diminished immunity

• Reduction in independent living

• Alcoholism

• Suicidal ideation and behavior, and

• Poorer health

What are the long-term effects of chronic loneliness?

Over time, loneliness can impair our ability to exercise self-control and delay gratification and it can compromise our executive functioning. It interferes with judgment, complex thought, will power, and perseverance as well as one’s ability to read other people.

 What causes some people to get stuck in “chronic” loneliness?

 Because loss of social connection was such a threat, loneliness engenders fear as well as pain. For each of us, our need for social connection and our sensitivity to social pain is biased by our individual genetic inheritance. Fear-based responses, understandably, prompt us to look out for ourselves, which can interfere with the accurate perceptions we need to effectively connect with others and the selection of the social skills or appropriate social responses in any given occasion. Thus, when a person becomes lonely, he or she can get caught in a feedback loop in which the undercurrent of danger and threat associated in evolutionary terms with social isolation can promote a form of social cognition and interaction that becomes a self-perpetuating, self-fulfilling prophecy.  

Could you share with us some of the solutions for the individual and society to decrease loneliness and to increase connection and social cooperation?

We go into this in some depth in our book. Briefly, our individual, sometimes distorted perceptions contribute to the physiological and chemical effects that accompany loneliness. Thus, we can make significant change, even at the physiological level, through techniques based on cognitive therapy, which consists largely of reframing one’s thoughts. Mostly, the solution lies in getting beyond the fear in order to be more available to others, which then provides the positive, almost therapeutic physiological responses that our bodies are more than willing to provide through normal social connection.

 A second key ingredient is to carefully select those with whom one seeks to develop a relationship. People do not need to be liked by or connected to everyone. It is not the quantity but the quality of one’s relationships that matter most. The research is clear that similarity – similar attitudes, values, interests, and activities – are an important foundation upon which to build such relationships.

Further Reading:

Cacioppo, J. T., & Patrick, W. (2008). Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Lack of sexual desire is the most common presenting problem at sex therapy clinics.¹² In a survey of Americans, a lack of sexual desire was reported by 32% of women and 15% of men ages 18 to 29 years.³ Recent books by sex therapists and clinicians with such titles as Rekindling desire: A step-by-step program to help low-sex and no-sex marriages⁴ and Reclaiming desire: Four keys to finding your lost libido⁵ target couples who seek to rekindle sexual intimacy and passion in their relationships. Several large-scale surveys have also shown that sexual desire declines over time in relationships.⁶⁷ Sexual desire typically peaks at the beginning of relationships when partners are just getting to know each other, and often decreases over the course of relationships.⁸⁹ In a recent issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,¹⁰ my colleagues and I introduce approach relationship goals (i.e., goals focused on the pursuit of positive experiences in one’s relationship such as fun, growth, and development) as a factor that may help couples to maintain sexual desire over the course of their relationship.

Approach and Avoidance Relationship Goals

Approach relationship goals direct individuals toward potential positive outcomes such as intimacy or growth in the relationship, and avoidance relationship goals direct individuals away from potential negative outcomes such as conflict or rejection. For example, “having sex to express love for your partner” is an approach sexual goal whereas “having sex because you don’t want your partner to be angry” is an avoidance sexual goal. Similarly, “I want to deepen my relationship with my romantic partner” is an approach relationship goal whereas “I want to make sure nothing bad happens to my relationship” is an avoidance relationship goal. People with approach goals want something good to happen and those with avoidance goals don’t want anything bad to happen. It’s possible to be high in approach goals AND high in avoidance goals. It may seem like a small difference, but research has shown that people who are high in approach and low in avoidance tend to feel better about themselves and their relationship. And now, we have evidence to show that these goals can help our sexual relationship as well! Whereas people with weak approach goals (i.e., those possessing a lack of interest in pursuing growth, fun, and development in their relationships) experienced declines in sexual desire over the course of the 6-month study, people with strong approach goals (i.e., those who possessed a great deal of interest in pursuing positive outcomes in their relationships) maintained high levels of sexual desire over the course of the study.

How Can Approach Goals Help to Maintain High Levels of Sexual Desire?

In our research, we found that people who tend to think of their relationships in terms of approach-oriented goals (such as the ones above) were able to extend the good times and weather the bad times. Relationships have good days and bad days, and these ups and downs take their toll on our sex life. Some days, your partner may really get on your nerves and the last thing you want to do is have sex. People with strong approach-oriented goals, however, don’t let these bad days affect their sexual desire as much. Additionally, some days you and your partner just “click” and you feel your sexual urges heighten. People with strong approach-oriented goals are more likely to take advantage of these good days and feel even greater sexual desire.

Further Reading:

1. Beck, J. G. (1995). Hypoactive sexual desire disorder: An overview. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63, 919-927.

2. Hawton, K., Catalan, J., & Fagg, J. (1991). Low sexual desire: Sex therapy results and prognostic factors. Behavioral Research and Therapy, 29, 217-224.

3. Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J. H., Michael, R. T., & Michaels, S. (1994). The social organization of sexuality. Sexual practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

4. McCarthy, B., & McCarthy, E. (2003). Rekindling desire: A step-by-step program to help low-sex and no-sex marriages. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge.

5. Goldstein, A., & Brandon, M. (2004). Reclaiming desire: Four keys to finding your lost libido. New York, NY: Rodale, Inc.

6. Johnson, A. M., Wadworth, J., Wellings, K., & Field, J. (1994). Sexual attitudes and lifestyles. London: Blackwell.

7. Klusmann, D. (2002). Sexual motivation and the duration of partnership. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31, 275-287.

8. Basson, R. (2002). Women’s sexual desire – Disordered or misunderstood? Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 28, 17-28.

9. Levine, S. B. (2003). The nature of sexual desire: A clinician’s perspective. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32, 279-285.

10. Impett, E., Strachman, A., Finkel, E., & Gable., S. L. (2008). Maintaining sexual desire and sexual satisfaction: The importance of approach relationship goals. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 94, 808-823.

Reprinted with permission from Greater Good magazine, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (Fall/Winter 2005). For more information, please visit www.greatergoodmag.org

Rick and Anna met on a blind date and immediately became enchanted with each other. They moved in together four months later, and after two more years they decided to get married. They planned to have kids after four years, and that worked like a charm. Jason came along right on schedule and his sister Debby arrived two years later. Unfortunately, somewhere over the years, not everything went according to plan. As we look in on Rick and Anna after they’ve been together for almost 10 years, their early enchantment seems to exist only in wistful memory.

Rick returned home from work about half an hour ago. He’s slumped on the couch when Anna sees him in the living room.

Anna: How come you didn’t put your stuff away after you came home?
Rick: I’ll do it in a minute.
Anna: It’s been a whole bunch of minutes already. Now I’ve got your sweater and papers dumped in the dining room, the kids’ toys in the kitchen, and me tripping over everything while I’m trying to make dinner.
Rick: Give me a break, Anna. I had a horrible afternoon at work and I’m just fried.
Anna: You haven’t asked about my afternoon. Your mother kept me on the phone for an hour, yelling about some cousin of yours who insulted her.
Rick: And I suppose you were your usual sweet and patient self, trying to help her calm down?
Anna: (No answer)
Rick (voice raised): I’ve had it, Anna. You’re out of control.
Anna: Maybe you need a more patient wife.
Rick (leaving the room): Maybe I do.

It didn’t take Rick and Anna long to go from a small complaint about putting away “stuff” to a discussion about the survival of their relationship. Readers familiar with self-help books or the professional literature on couples therapy will probably say that Rick and Anna need to learn more effective communication skills. After they recover from their heated exchange, Rick and Anna will probably say the same thing.

We think their problem goes deeper than that. In our careers as family researchers and couples therapists, we have conducted long-term studies of more than 300 families, following many from their first child’s birth through the preschool, elementary school, and high school years. We’ve seen couples confronted and even overwhelmed by the challenges in their relationship, but we’ve also seen many partners find ways to overcome these problems. We’ve found that it’s simply not enough to teach couples like Rick and Anna the “right” thing to say in the middle of a fight or ask them to follow communication “rules,” such as “summarize what your partner just said before responding to him,” or “make ‘I’ rather than ‘you’ statements.” Couples’ relationships suffer less from a failure of words than from a failure of imagination—an ability to imagine what a partner is thinking and feeling. We believe that the key ingredient missing from Rick and Anna’s conversation—and from the relationships of countless other couples—is empathy.

Beyond words

What do we mean by empathy? There’s a thinking component of empathy that involves the ability to take another person’s point of view (“I can see why you find it so hard to talk to my mother when she complains all the time”) and an emotional capacity to feel what the other is feeling (“Oh honey, it hurts when I see you so upset”). Both of these aspects describe what might be going on inside one partner when the other is feeling intense emotions—often negative (sad, angry, frightened) but sometimes positive (elated, delighted, joyful). Another important aspect of empathy involves behavior consistent with that empathic position. The simple statement “I feel your pain” isn’t really evidence of empathy unless the speaker actually does something to show a true understanding of the listener’s experience. If Anna had explained to Rick how overwhelmed she was feeling about caring for the children and taking care of their home, Rick could have shown her that he “gets it” by helping to pick up the toys or working with Anna to prepare dinner.

A number of researchers have investigated whether accuracy in “reading” one’s partner is an important ingredient of couple satisfaction. Are partners happier in their relationships if they can conjure up an accurate picture of what the other person is feeling and experiencing? Indeed, studies have found that people who gauge their partner’s thoughts and feelings more accurately during disagreements are generally more satisfied with their overall relationship. But for empathy to be truly beneficial, both partners need to experience it. If Rick had responded empathically to Anna’s frustration about her conversation with his mother but Anna ignored or dismissed his response, Rick would likely have been left feeling even less empathic and more distant from his wife.

Clearly, both Rick and Anna failed to demonstrate empathy in their exchange. Rick discarded his papers and sweater on the floor and didn’t move to pick them up when Anna complained. Anna didn’t respond to Rick’s statement about his terrible day, and, in turn, Rick was sarcastic, almost contemptuous, of Anna’s description of her conversation with his mother. As their hostile exchange quickly escalated the specter of not being the right partners for each other overshadowed everything else. In a more empathic mode, Anna might have greeted Rick before complaining, asked about his day, and softened her complaint once she heard how difficult it was. If she had done that, Rick might have been more inclined to place his belongings out of the line of traffic and ask about Anna’s day the next time he came home.

That’s often easier said than done. As we all know, it’s especially difficult to take other people’s point of view, feel what they’re feeling, and act on those feelings when we are stressed ourselves. Some people seem to be not very good at this at all, but even the most empathic people occasionally find it psychologically difficult and emotionally taxing to empathize with their partner—and the tone of family relationships often reflects those difficulties.

The good news is that there are ways partners can learn to empathize with one another. Our own research and clinical experience, and that of a number of colleagues, suggest several methods for fostering empathy between spouses. While there isn’t one recipe that guarantees partners’ empathy in every situation, we believe there are enough tools to help couples like Rick and Anna not only survive adversity, but use it in a way to strengthen their relationship.

Fostering empathy

Empathy seems to come more easily to some partners than others. Yet although we tend to describe some people as empathic and others as lacking empathy, empathy is not a fixed trait—a stable characteristic that a person expresses similarly in all situations. We believe that under ideal conditions, everyone can be at least somewhat empathic in the moment. We see five main conditions necessary for fostering empathy in couples’ lives. These are when both partners: (1) are reasonably mentally healthy; (2) have grown up in empathic families; (3) work collaboratively in parenting their children; (4) have relatively low levels of stress external to the family or sources of support to cope with the stresses they face; and (5) have what they consider to be a fair division of labor and an effective way of solving the problems that confront them. Even if they don’t meet one or more of these conditions, partners can still work on ways to overcome that problem and empathize with each other.

The first major impediment to understanding “where a partner is coming from” is either partner’s serious cognitive or emotional problems. These problems can prevent them from reading others accurately, or may trigger disabling levels of anxiety or symptoms of depression. For example, one aspect of depression is the tendency to see and expect the worst in other people. It is extremely difficult for a depressed person to understand that a loving partner can do something hurtful unintentionally. It is also hard for the non-depressed spouse to understand why the depressed partner is reacting in such an unrelentingly negative way. One option for couples that find themselves in the middle of escalating negative exchanges is for one partner to talk to the other about seeking outside help as a couple to deal with the emotional problems. Empathy may come easier once the couple has started to address these issues.

Many researchers and therapists also look at how childhood attachment to parents affects partners’ abilities to empathize with each other as adults. Studies of attachment across generations suggest that parents who make their children feel secure and reassured during times of stress prime them to feel empathic in their adult relationships. Adults whose childhood experiences led them to expect caring, understanding responses from loved ones when they were upset find it easier to be optimistic and empathic when relationship problems stir their emotions, even if their partner doesn’t act empathically in the moment. By contrast, partners whose caretakers dismissed their childhood fears feel anxious and not worthy of care. They are then more likely to feel threatened and react negatively to a spouse who doesn’t seem to understand their feelings.

Also, for many partners, the relationship between their parents has provided a salient model of what they can expect from couple relationships. If both partners’ parents typically disparaged and insulted one another, it will be more difficult for the couple to establish a civil way of solving problems. Some couples whose parents were always in high conflict tend to mirror that pattern, while others try to avoid upsetting conversations altogether. In a couple where one partner experienced constant shouting and arguing in his family and members of the other partner’s family never raised their voices, neither partner has a useful model for tackling the differences that partners inevitably need to resolve. Although it isn’t possible to change what happened to us when we were children, it is not too late for adults to understand more about their own and their partner’s early relationships. This often leads to insight about how partners’ styles of responding to conflict may be a reaction to the way they were treated by the closest figures in their lives years ago.

Working from this perspective, psychologist Susan Johnson talks about how strengthening a feeling of security in romantic relationships can compensate for old wounds and allow partners to be more empathic and flexible in the meanings they attribute to their partner’s behavior (e.g., “Rick must have had a difficult day and that’s why he just dumped his stuff when he got home. It’s not that he’s doesn’t care about what I need.”). As a therapist, Johnson uses empathy herself to help couples feel more secure. In exploring the roots of each partner’s reactions, she acts as a model for how to be an empathic partner. She might say to Rick, “It sounds as if you can’t imagine that anyone will take your needs and desires seriously. So you feel as if you have no choice but to agree when Anna says you may need to find someone else rather than work it out with her.” In this way, Johnson explores Rick’s fears and reformulates his negative reaction as an understandable position, with the goal of strengthening both Rick’s and Anna’s feelings of empathy for one another.

New challenges for couples

Becoming parents increases opportunities for disagreements between partners, especially when new parents discover that they have some different ideas about parenting. Some disagreements can be resolved by having discussions when things are calm, rather than when emotions are running high. On some issues, it may be possible to let each parent handle the children in a different fashion, so that each parent has a unique relationship with them. On other core issues, they may need to work out a way of responding to their children that satisfies both of their instincts.

Either way, when partners are parents, as Rick and Anna are, the conditions for empathy can be difficult to create because time and attention gets shifted from the couple to the children. Modern parents who are typically juggling at least two jobs and care of the home and children have few occasions when they are alone together and reasonably well rested. Because they are already working away from home for so many hours, parents feel guilty about stealing time as a couple. Yet family research with parents of young children reveals that children suffer academically, socially, and often emotionally when their parents are unhappy. The results of our years of working with partners who are parents have provided a clear message: If you feel you can’t take time to work on your relationship for yourselves, do it for your children. We know that children will reap the benefits of their parents’ more satisfying exchanges—both because they’ll have models of empathic behavior to emulate and because they’ll be more free to concentrate on their own learning and development, instead of becoming preoccupied with their parents’ distress.

Inevitably, all couples also experience stress outside the family that spills over into their lives at home—strain at work, with friends, in the neighborhood, and so on. Partners who are distracted by these stressors find it difficult to listen fully, to place themselves in each other’s position, or to imagine how the other person is feeling. There are no simple solutions to this problem. What we suggest is that partners develop an experimental attitude and try small changes that might bring some relief. When Rick comes home from work, Anna could support his having 10 minutes to “chill out” while she ignores the belongings he dumped in the living room, as long as he has agreed to pick them up and join her in the kitchen to help afterwards.

Although these examples illustrate that many of the conditions that support or interfere with empathy don’t start with the couple, the final condition—partners’ division of family work and care of the children, and their effectiveness at solving problems—focuses more specifically on aspects of the couple relationship.

In our longitudinal studies, we have found that these issues play a critical role in both partners’ satisfaction with their overall relationship. Some researchers and couples argue that the secret of satisfying relationships is a traditional arrangement of roles, with separate, well-defined tasks for men and women, whereas others argue that modern marriage calls for an egalitarian arrangement of a 50-50 division of family tasks and care of children, based on the partners’ available time, skills, and preferences. Our research suggests that more important than the specific arrangement of “who does what” is whether each partner feels that their arrangement fits their ideals and is fair.

Another key to couple satisfaction is the partners’ confidence that they have effective ways of tackling problems when they do arise. When partners are unable to work collaboratively to meet the challenges of family life, they are likely to be less empathic with one another and less satisfied with their overall relationship.

Collaboration relies upon, and helps facilitate, clear and honest communication. While we said earlier that Rick and Anna don’t just need communication skills training, we hope that increased empathy will lead to more satisfying communication. Along these lines, couples therapist Dan Wile writes about how empathy isn’t just an attitude that partners can choose to adopt, but develops out of the couple’s interaction. As a therapist, Wile tries to help couples “get on a platform” from which they can look at their problems jointly and empathically and begin resolving their difficulties together. (See sidebar.) He discusses how empathy can be self-perpetuating since an empathic exchange can help partners shift from behaving like enemies or strangers to feeling like allies. For instance, Rick might have said, “Anna, I can see that I created another mess, but I’m so wiped out by how my boss stole my ideas at work that I can’t move right this minute. What kind of time extension could you give me here?” This would have been more likely to put Anna at ease and take her out of an adversarial mindset. She might have found herself responding, “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I was tense because my day has been so frustrating, and I feel as if we haven’t connected for days.”

How can couples get on a “platform” in order to have non-adversarial discussions? Although it may sound like the last thing to do in the middle of a fight, they could try this: When one partner becomes upset, the other can start by asking questions about where the feelings are coming from, rather than attacking the partner or defending against the perceived attack. This can lead the troubled spouse to feel the partner’s empathy and be more willing to give a fuller explanation of what is upsetting about the situation.

Andrew Christensen and the late Neil Jacobson wrote about how empathic exchanges can turn problems “into vehicles for greater intimacy.” According to these researchers, one way to get partners to unite empathically with each other is to get at the soft feelings, such as sadness and fear, that underlie the more frequently and easily expressed hard feelings like anger and resentment. Trying to understand where the other person is coming from can lead to both partners feeling as if their experience has been heard, which, in turn, allows them to feel safe expressing pain without blame. In this way, empathy can lead to acceptance and forgiveness. Psychologist and marital therapist John Gottman suggests that a way for one partner to understand the other’s upsets is to take time to have regular discussions about each of their goals, dreams, and worries. Gottman suggests that these “Love Maps” of partners’ inner lives encourage them to be aware of each other’s changing needs so that they can be understanding and supportive when things go wrong.

Of course, managing to meet all five of these conditions that promote empathy all of the time is impossible, even for couples with many advantages in their lives. We know that it’s not enough to simply say, “be more empathic” and “don’t resort to blaming, unforgiving, contemptuous, or icy-silent behaviors.” Most couples would do these things if they could. What we are saying is this: Empathy is so important to a relationship that if it appears to be low, partners must talk about ways that they can help each other to take a more empathic position. A first step in that direction might be to review an “empathy conditions checklist” to see whether anything can be done about any of the barriers to empathy that are affecting their lives.

What if couples need help?

Our longitudinal studies of hundreds of families make it clear that life is stressful for most modern partners. Couples should pursue outside help if the partners have tried to create conditions to encourage more empathy and have failed to change the atmosphere between them. A consultation with a mental health professional might help get them started. An empathic helper who understands couples can often help improve the climate in which partners tackle their problems. Partners can learn gradually to take on this role themselves so that they can deal with future problems in more empathic and constructive ways.

Let’s return to Rick and Anna. After stewing in silence in different rooms, wondering whether their relationship will survive and wishing they could avoid these hurtful exchanges, Rick and Anna considered two choices. The first was to try to use some time together, possibly with the aid of some self-help books, to try to resolve some of the issues behind their conflicts. The second was to seek the help of a professional marriage counselor or couples therapist to teach them how to communicate more effectively. We are not able to predict which alternative would be more effective for them or for couples in similar situations. We do know that their impasse at this moment doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve lost the chance to feel that early enchantment again. At the moment, they are struggling with demands that make it difficult for them to empathize with one another and to feel the delight that they experienced when they first met. But we are confident that there are practical and realistic steps that Rick and Anna can take to begin to work through this challenge to their relationship. If they can renew their ability to feel empathy for each other’s thoughts and feelings, we believe that they will be capable of recapturing the friendship, romance, and happiness they experienced years ago.

Philip A. Cowan, Ph.D., professor of psychology emeritus, and Carolyn Pape Cowan Ph.D., adjunct professor of psychology emerita, both at the University of California, Berkeley, are co-directors of the Schoolchildren and their Families Project and co-authors of When Partners Becomes Parents: The Big Life Change for Couples. Neera Mehta is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a fellow of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center.

Reprinted with permission from Greater Good magazine, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (Fall/Winter 2005). For more information, please visit www.greatergoodmag.org

Reprinted from Greater Good magazine, Vol. 1, Issue 1 (Spring/Summer 2004). For more information, please visit www.greatergoodmag.org

Despite the optimism of newlyweds, most marriages eventually end in divorce. Marriage counselors often advise couples to treat each other more affectionately, to express empathy, and to learn to compromise on each other’s behalf. This seems like reasonable advice, but for many people it also seems to be difficult advice to follow.

So thinking about marriage raises some general questions about the challenges of improving human behavior. How can we inspire people to act in each other’s best interests? How is it that people put the needs of others before their own, and how can we get people to do this more often? How, basically, can we get people to be nicer to each other?

These are questions that philosophers and social scientists have grappled with for centuries. The 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that humans were not individually capable of transcending their selfish natures and so suggested that the function of government is to rein in our basic impulses. In the absence of governmental restraints, he wrote in his Leviathan, life would be “nasty, brutish, and short.” In other words, people will be nice to others only when forced to do so. In the mid-20th century, B.F. Skinner and other “behaviorist” psychologists said the only sure way to get people to help each other is to make it personally rewarding for them to do so. In other words, people will be nice to others only when it benefits themselves.

Both these views of human nature suggest that cooperative behavior is inherently fragile. Take away the constraints or the rewards, and cooperation should fall apart.

Our research has a very different take on human nature. As researchers who have devoted our careers to studying the first few years of marriage, we have focused on the phenomenon of compassionate love between spouses. We care about compassionate love because we expect it to inspire positive behaviors toward others, behaviors like self-sacrifice, tolerance, charity, and support. Compassionate lovers break free from the Hobbesian and the behaviorist worldview because compassionate lovers do these things even at a cost to the self, and even when they are not forced to do so by social constraints. Thus our attempts to identify the causes and correlates of compassionate love in marriage seem to be a step in a new and promising direction toward understanding positive human relations.

But is it so new? A second glance at definitions of compassionate love reveals a paradox, perhaps a contradiction, that brings us uncomfortably back to the behaviorists’ ideas. In current thinking, it is not enough for compassionate lovers to put the needs of others before their own. They have to delight in doing it. They have to be fulfilled by advancing the growth of another person. This does not sound selfless any more. Indeed, the behaviorists see an element of selfishness in even the most selfless behavior.

Compassionate love researchers do not really disagree with this. Current views of compassionate love do not preclude taking pleasure in the benefit of others, but rather feature that pleasure as a central element. In specifying what compassionate love is, then, the challenge is to figure out how to reconcile these elements of selflessness and self-interest.

We have been developing a model of compassionate love between spouses that may help resolve this paradox. Our research has shown that newlyweds who fit our definition of compassionate lovers do in fact have longer, more supportive marriages. In this essay we will present our model of compassionate love and our data showing the benefits of compassionate love in marriage. But first we will briefly explain why we think marriage is an especially relevant area in which to study compassionate love.

First, to the extent that compassionate love promotes behavior that benefits another person, compassionate love should be an important, even crucial, element of a successful marriage. One should expect spouses who love each other compassionately to stay together longer, be happier, and support each other more effectively than couples who do not love each other compassionately. Conversely, it is hard to imagine a successful marriage in which spouses are not able, at least occasionally, to put each other’s needs before their own.

Second, learning how to foster truly compassionate love between spouses seems to be a necessary first step toward promoting compassionate love toward humanity as a whole. If we cannot find a way for husbands and wives, who know each other and have vowed to honor each other, to be compassionate, then promoting compassion toward strangers is going to be a difficult nut to crack.

Third, newlyweds are an appropriate place to distinguish between compassionate love and other kinds of love. As you might imagine, newlyweds all claim to love one another. We have interviewed hundreds of newlyweds, and when we asked them, “Do you love your partner?” they look at us like we’re crazy. They get offended by the question: “Of course, I love my partner. We just got married!” Furthermore, they tend to score high on every kind of love scale thrown at them. Newlyweds are passionate, companionate, they like and love each other, and when asked, they profess their undying willingness to make sacrifices for each other. And yet not all of these couples love each other in the same way. Studying newlyweds closely may suggest ways of teasing apart the compassionate lovers from the other lovers.

A model of compassionate love

Our model rests on the premise that love for a partner originates in a variety of beliefs and judgments, ranging from perceptions of the partner’s specific traits and abilities (e.g., My partner is a great cook) to global evaluations of the partner as a whole (e.g., My partner is to global evaluations of the partner as a whole (e.g., My partner is the greatest). There are two important implications of this model. First, spouses who believe their partners to be wonderful people overall may still hold a range of positive and negative beliefs about their partners’ specific qualities. Second, these perceptions of a partner’s specific qualities may not necessarily agree with the partner’s self-image. While some spouse’s specific views of their partners may be unrealistically positive or negative, other spouses may see their partners as their partners see themselves. Among happily married couples, then, some spouses may demonstrate a deep understanding of their partners’ specific qualities, whereas other spouses may have little insight into their partners’ qualities.

We suggest that compassionate love may be a love that recognizes the partner’s specific positive and negative qualities, while simultaneously affirming the partner’s overall worth. Purely romantic love, in contrast, may be defined as love that glorifies the partner without understanding the partner’s specific qualities. While the romantic lover holds the partner in high esteem, ignoring faults and weaknesses, the compassionate lover holds the partner in high esteem while at the same time recognizing and even embracing specific faults and weaknesses.

What makes this love compassionate? Consider that if we truly believed that everything about our partners was fabulous, then loving them would not be very difficult. Indeed, some spouses may not be able to love their partners unless they view each of their partners’ specific traits favorably. In this case, the spouse may be unwilling to accept a partner’s faults, and once the partner’s less-than-perfect traits become apparent, the spouse’s love for the partner may dissipate. However, understanding and accepting a partner’s specific strengths and weaknesses may represent a selfless act, in that spouses endure the costs of their partners’ faults, weaknesses, and limitations—but love them anyway. Compassionate love is personally fulfilling, in that spouses can reap the rewards of their love, but it is also selfless, in that spouses accept their partners for who they are, the good and the bad.

The goal of our research has been to identify spouses who compassionately love their partners and to examine the implications of compassionate love for marital well-being. To address these issues, we have been following 250 newly-married couples over the first four years of their marriage. When these couples were first married, we asked spouses not only to rate their current feelings about their marriage, but also to report on their global and specific evaluations of themselves and their partners. That is, we asked spouses whether they considered themselves and their partner to be good, worthy people, and we also asked them to rate themselves and their partners on numerous specific traits and abilities, such as intellectual ability, social skills, extraversion, and conscientiousness.

We found that virtually all spouses reported they were extremely happy with their marriage and that they held their partner in the highest regard. In fact, most spouses viewed their partners as better, more worthy people than even the partners viewed themselves to be. However, spouses varied significantly in the extent to which they understood their partners’ self-perceived traits and abilities. Thus, only a subset of these loving, newly-married couples seemed to be engaging in compassionate love, in which a globally positive view of the partner is linked to an accurate understanding of the partner’s specific strengths and weaknesses.

We also found a connection between spouses’ understanding of their partners’ traits and the quality of the couple’s interactions. We had couples engage in a series of tasks in which each spouse was asked to choose a personal problem or difficulty they were facing and discuss that problem with their partner. A panel of independent observers then rated the supportiveness of the partner’s behaviors during the discussion. Wives who displayed a greater understanding of their husbands’ specific traits were rated as providing better support to their husbands in these interactions than were wives with less understanding of their husbands’ qualities. Given that all couples reported being very happy with their partner and the marriage, these results suggest that caring for a partner may not be enough to provide positive social support. Instead, it seems that holding each other in high esteem while also understanding one another’s specific qualities may allow spouses to give both the loving encouragement and the specific information necessary to support a partner effectively.

Loving a partner compassionately also seems to contribute to marital stability over time. We found that when wives had a deeper understanding of their husbands’ specific qualities, the couple was less likely to divorce over the first four years of marriage. Importantly, this finding held regardless of whether the wives’ specific views of their husbands were positive or negative. In other words, it was only when wives understood their partner’s traits, not necessarily when they viewed those traits positively, that the marriage fared better over time.

Why did marriages only seem to benefit when wives understood their partners’ specific qualities? Husbands varied significantly in their understanding of their wives, such that some husbands understood their wives’ traits and abilities better than other husbands. However, husbands’ understanding was not associated with their support abilities or with couples’ likelihood of divorce. One possible reason for this apparent gender difference may be that husbands’ understanding of their wives’ qualities has different effects on the relationship. For instance, while husbands’ support skills may not be helped by an understanding of their wives’ qualities, behavioral skills that we didn’t study here, such as their conflict resolution abilities, may be enhanced in husbands when they understand their wives’ specific traits. Further research is needed into the influence that husbands’ specific understanding may have on marital processes. At this point, however, we have no reason to believe that understanding is not a good thing for both spouses.

The implications of knowing and adoring

Overall, these findings suggest that loving a partner compassionately may have important benefits for marriage. First, compassionate love has benefits for the beloved. While it may be good to be the object of love, it is better to be the object of a love that is coupled with understanding. When spouses are both loved and understood, they are likely to get better support from their partners. Second, compassionate love has benefits for the lover. Wives who loved their husbands compassionately were in marriages that were less likely to dissolve over time. Spouses whose initial feelings of love were based on a relatively accurate understanding of the partners’ specific qualities began the marriage accepting their partners’ limitations. These spouses should not be surprised by their partners’ negative qualities and thus should be less likely to react poorly when their partners’ weaknesses surface over the course of the relationship.

It is important to emphasize that understanding a partner’s specific qualities by itself did not enhance marital quality. Nor did simply loving the partner. Rather, it was the combination of loving and understanding the partner that was associated with better marital quality. It seems that spouses in healthy, stable marriages may love their partners in spite of (or perhaps because of) their less-than-perfect specific traits.

How can we foster compassionate love both within marriage and between people in general? The advice just to love one another is too simple. Love without understanding is not enough, not helpful, not likely to enhance relationships. Understanding may be the key to empathy and love.

Benjamin R. Karney, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Florida and the director of the Florida Marriage Project. Lisa A. Neff, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the University of Florida.

Reprinted with permission from from Greater Good magazine, Vol. 1, Issue 1 (Spring/Summer 2004). For more information, please visit www.greatergoodmag.org

David A. Kenny, Ph.D., University of Connecticut

Writers from Chaucer to Shakespeare have stated that “Love is blind,” but is it really? We might think that people would be very highly motivated to truly understand their relationship partners. After all, if they make a poor choice, they suffer the negative consequences. Additionally, romantic partners, especially in the early stages of their relationship, are actively seeking information about their partner. Lovers spend a great deal of time together and they share with each other their most intimate secrets. We might think that lovers have their eyes wide open and they are not so blind.

Various groups of researchers have shown that lovers can be blind. Important research by Sandra Murray and colleagues has consistently shown that idealization of the partner (that is, seeing them as better than they really are) is endemic to close relationships and predictive of relationship satisfaction. Maybe then love is blind?

In my own research, I have shown that people in relationships are accurate to some extent, but they are also biased in how they view their partner. With Linda Acitelli of the University of Houston, we asked married and dating couples various questions, e.g., how much they liked their job and how satisfied they were in their sex life. We also asked them to guess how their partner answered each question. We found that people were both accurate (they could predict how their partner responded), but they were also biased in the sense that they assumed that their partner felt the same as they did. Interestingly, accuracy exceeded bias when the topic was non-threatening (e.g., job satisfaction), but bias exceeded accuracy when the topic was threatening (e.g., satisfaction with sex).

Currently, Tessa West and I are extending this research in three areas. First, we are studying roommates over time and we are especially focusing on inter-racial roommates. Second, we are examining accuracy and bias in family members’ perceptions of each other. Third, we are studying accuracy and bias in romantic relationships. Couples are given an incentive to accurately judge how attracted their romantic partners are to alternative partners, after being told that the alternative partners are highly attracted to their partners. In all three studies, we expect threat to increase bias and reduce accuracy.

Many people volunteer their time to formal organizations such as churches, hospitals, museums or AYSO. Parents are often drawn into volunteering by their children, helping out the PTA, acting as room parents or running a bake sale. Church members may visit the sick, work in a soup kitchen, or teach in the religious school as part of their role in the community. Half of all adults devote some time to a voluntary organization in any year, with a select few spending many hours helping others by their activities.[i]

At the same time, people provide help and assistance to others informally, perhaps taking their mother to the doctor or shoveling a neighborÕs sidewalk. Some people act as regular caregivers for a disabled parent, in-law or child. Family members provide the vast majority of the care received by those in need, serving a function that may be literally lifesaving, and certainly improving the lives of those who receive the care. In fact, eight out of ten people say that they helped others informally during the last year, often spending a good deal of time doing so.[ii]

Volunteers and informal helpers make the world a better place for others. But current research evidence paints a convincing picture that those who help others benefit in return. One study recruited older adults as helpers in elementary school classrooms. Volunteers saw measurable improvements in their physical functioning as a result of their experience. The reading scores of the children in their classrooms also improved and classroom misbehavior declined.[iii]

And you don’t need to volunteer a lot to reap the rewards; those who devote less than a hundred hours a year – that’s two hours a week – see significantly better health over the next several years than those who were like them at the beginning of the study but did not volunteer.

Volunteering also seems to lead to improvements in emotional well-being, with those who help others showing lower levels of depressive symptoms over the next several years than others with the same characteristics who did not volunteer.[iv]

Some current research that I am doing with Yanni Hao looks at the impact of both volunteering and informal helping on physical and emotional health of older adults over the next eight years. Our results show that volunteering and helping activities at fairly low levels of time involvement have protective effects against the decline of psychological well-being and physical functioning. Those who participate in both activities enjoy a slower rate of health decline than those who do only one or than those who do neither.[v]

Why do people who help others gain in their own physical and mental health? Researchers have suggested a number of possibilities. Helping behavior requires the mobilization of physical activity and cognitive faculties, keeping them strong and functioning. Engaging in helping activities can provide individuals with a sense of purpose and meaning in late life. The altruistic nature of volunteering and informal helping offers a way of gaining social approval and improving self-esteem. And those who work in a soup kitchen get a chance to talk to others while they do so, which increases the chances of that if they need help they will be able to find and mobilize social support and social contacts.

So, jump in, sign up, and enjoy the rewards from the good deeds you do.

[i] Wilson, John, and Marc Musick. 1997. Who Cares? Toward an Integrated Theory of Volunteer Work. American Sociological Review 62(5):694-713.

[ii] Wilson, John, and Marc Musick. 1997. Who Cares? Toward an Integrated Theory of Volunteer Work. American Sociological Review 62(5):. (Oct., 1997), pp. 694-713.

[iii] Rebok, George W. , Michelle C. Carlson, Thomas A. Glass, Sylvia McGill, Joel Hill, Barbara A. Wasik, Nicholas Ialongo, Kevin D. Frick, Linda P. Fried and Meghan D. Rasmussen. 2004. Short-term impact of experience Corps participation on children and schools: Results from a pilot randomized trial. Journal of Urban Health 81(1):79-93.

[iv] Li, Yunqing and Kenneth F. Ferraro. 2005. Volunteering and Depression in Later Life: Social Benefit or Selection Processes? Journal of Health and Social Behavior 46(1):68-84.

[v] Hao, Yanni and Linda J. Waite. 2007. Helping Behavior and Well-Being Among Older Adults. Working Draft. Center on Aging, NORC & University of Chicago.

There is a rising tide of obesity and diabetes in the US and throughout the world. In the US alone, there are estimated to be ~ 20 million affected individuals. The incidence of type 2 Diabetes Mellitus rose 41% between 1997 and 2003 and 60% of new cases are obese while among children > 90% of new cases are obese. While most of us think of diabetes and obesity as primarily a body problem, a new research paper highlights the influence of glucose control on memory and the architecture of a brain region called the hippocampus, which is essential for our ability to remember daily events and spatial information. In Type 2 diabetics, the volume of the hippocampus, determined by non-invasive brain imaging, was smaller in relation to the degree of elevated glucose in the blood and along with that there was also impairment of memory functions that depend on the hippocampus. Moreover, there is evidence that Type 2 diabetes and poor glucose control increase the risk of developing dementia later in life.

How do the effects of poor glucose control on the hippocampus come about? The hippocampus needs glucose to function properly and the body actually mobilizes and increases glucose levels when we are challenged to use our brains. Lack of adequate glucose in the hippocampus is why it is sometimes good to eat a candy bar before taking a test. And the hippocampus has receptors for insulin, a key hormone that controls glucose levels. A recent study shows that, in hippocampus of rats with experimental diabetes, the ability of glucose to be transported into brain cells is impaired by alterations in the cellular signaling pathway by which the molecules that transport glucose into cells are first placed in the cell membrane and then activated to do their transporting. These mechanisms are very similar to the mechanisms for glucose transport that exist in muscle.

Although managing obesity and diabetes in society is a huge and complex problem, there are some things that individuals can do to reduce the chances of developing Type 2 diabetes. Previous work has highlighted how regular exercise prevents diabetes and improves cognitive function. In these studies, it was not necessary to become a marathon runner Ð rather, for sedentary adults, walking 30 minutes a day was effective providing it was sustained over a 6 year period. Interestingly, only a 6 month intervention was effective in inducing better attention and decision making and in changing activation patterns in the brain, as assessed by brain scans.

But maintaining habits of daily, regular exercise over months and years requires social interactions Ð support groups, friends who get people out the door when they are not feeling quite in the mood to do their daily walk. Exercise of this kind is often a social enterprise and social support is known to have broad benefits upon health. For example, having more than 3 regular social contacts has been shown to reduce the cumulative burden of chronic stress in both men and women. Thus, what common sense has told us is now supported by a deepening understanding of the underlying biology, because we now recognize specific mechanisms and processes by which physical activity and social relationships benefit brain and body health. And, as we have noted above, these include the prevention of diabetes and the enhancement of brain function.

References:

Gold SM, Dziobek I, Sweat V, Tirsi A, Rogers K, Bruehl H, Tsui W, Richardson S, Javier E, Convit A (2007) Hippocampal damage and memory impairments as possible early brain complications of type 2 diabetes. Diabetologia 50:711-719.

Gold PE (1987) Sweet Memories. American Scientist 75:151-155.

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Human biology includes a variety of mechanisms that motivate individuals to achieve or maintain pleasant affective states. Hunger, thirst, cold, and pain each alerts us to tissue needs and motivate us to act to rectify the corresponding need. But happiness is not simply the opposite of pain, sadness, or discomfort. What predicts happiness in contemporary society?

Prior research has measured happiness in twins to determine if happiness was heritable. This work indicated that 62% of the variance in happiness was found to be attributable to persistent and transitory environmental factors, whereas only 38% was estimated to be heritable. Research on the features in people’s lives that are associated with happiness revealed that people who have higher incomes and satisfying interpersonal relationships (e.g., satisfying marriages) are also happier. However, two things (e.g., money and happiness) can be associated without one causing the other. For instance, ice cream sales and shark attacks are correlated, but neither causes the other. (Hot weather increases the likelihood that people eat ice cream and that people swim in the ocean. With more people swimming in the ocean, shark attacks also rise in hot weather.) To determine whether money, satisfying relationships, or either make people happy, longitudinal research is needed.

To address this question, we turned to data from our Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study (CHASRS), a population-based longitudinal study of English-speaking African Americans, Latino-Americans, and Non-Hispanic Caucasians born between 1935 and 1952. Individuals in the United States who fall in this age range represent approximately 18% of the population, owns more than 50% of the financial assets in America, accounts for more than half of the funds spent annually on new car sales, and generally drives the overall economy in the United States. Most have also spent their adult life working and are now nearing or have reached retirement. It therefore is an interesting group to probe for factors that make adults happy.

We first replicated prior research showing that household income and satisfying interpersonal relationships were correlated with happiness. To investigate what factors in people’s lives were likely to lead to happiness, we next performed longitudinal analyses. Two factors emerged that are noteworthy here. First, people who had satisfying interpersonal relationships became happier over time whereas those who felt lonely or isolated, whether married or not, became less happy over time. Second, although household income had been correlated with happiness, longitudinal analyses indicated that household income did not predict the subsequent changes in happiness. Instead, we found that happiness predicted subsequent increases in household income. Indeed, when we examined what might be producing this surprising result, we found that satisfying relationships made people happy and vice versa, and that it was the quality of the interpersonal relationships that led to bigger increases in income!

How might higher levels of satisfaction with your relationships transform happiness into greater income? There are at least two routes by which this may be achieved. First, happy people form good relationships in the workplace as elsewhere, and good relationships promote better job performance, positively influence the likelihood of receiving good performance reviews and promotions, and provide better “networking” opportunities that lead in financially productive directions. Second, happiness promotes creative decision making, which in turn improves one’s station in social and work domains. In both cases, these results suggest that sacrificing quality relationships with spouse, family, and colleagues in pursuit of higher raises may be counterproductive.

In sum, Aristotle suggested that the only critical ingredient in the recipe for supreme happiness was other people. Although we may often think that money is the route to happiness, scientific research suggests the effect goes in the other direction. When you are happy with your personal relationships, you perform better at work and you enjoy bigger increases in income across time. Taking time to develop and maintain meaningful and personally satisfying relationships may pay great dividends.