Post Date December, 03 2023
In the past few days, the media has been excited about a new study that claims that getting married makes people happier. As I mentioned before, one should remain skeptical of such statements. And I have also provided detailed evidence that specific studies that have attracted attention have not actually proven that marriage can make people happier.
If you need to prove that getting married makes people happier (although this is not the case), then you first need to prove to people that married people live happier lives than single people. Once you have completed this first proof, you need to continue to argue that marriage (rather than other factors) makes people feel happy. But if the original author's data is accurately analyzed, the conclusion drawn is that whether in central and eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, or South and Southeast Asia, single people are happier than married people; Even single individuals in Western Europe (including the UK) and CIS countries (including Russia) are as happy as married individuals.
Here, I have to mention another statement by Grover and Helliwell, who explain that the reason why married people are happier (although this is not the case) is because married people (at least some of them) benefit from having spouses like close friends. The New York Times believes that this finding suggests that people "directly find a good friend to get married".
In their articles (working papers, not articles published in industry magazines), they predict that "people who have good friendships with their spouses will benefit more from marriage than others." Sometimes authors say such things because they actually did not get the results they wanted (the results they wanted were married people living better lives). So they compared married people who were doing well with all single people.
In this case, if the author wants to prove that friendship with their spouse makes the marriage happy (ignoring the fact that it is often not), then they need to prove the importance of friendship in marriage, or at least prove that friendship is more important in marital life than single life.
I think these authors really understand this. If they understand, then they should be the first to prove this matter - although it is a very simple and fundamental matter in research methodology. Comparing married couples who have a friendly relationship with all single individuals is like comparing a weight loss plan that combines exercise with other weight loss plans that do not include exercise. Ignoring the existence of exercise directly is simply self deception.
The following is a paragraph written by the author at the beginning of the article, discussing the importance of friendship, which is eye-catching:
If friendship makes marriage happy, then we can imagine that friendship and marriage can be replaced, and compared to married people, friendship is more important for unmarried people because married people have already gained the need for friendship from marriage
That's right! That's the idea, at least it's an important one. I have to talk about other things, such as whether people tend to spend time alone or with others, and how to achieve their ideal loneliness social ratio. No one has conducted similar research, although the results of my 'single soul' survey indicate the potential significance of studying this matter.
I have been eagerly searching for the correct analysis and its results. The married group should be divided into two subgroups: (1) those who are married and consider their spouse as their best friend, and (2) those who are married but do not consider their spouse as their best friend. The single group also needs to be subdivided into two groups. The 'friendship group' can be classified as one type, just like the first type in the married group, where there is a close friend or confidant, or living with other friends (but not a sexual partner, or more than one friend)
To prove the special significance of friendship in marriage, the author needs to prove that married individuals benefit more from a close friend like spouse than single individuals from friends (or living with friends).
The author does divide married individuals (including only those who are currently married) into two groups based on whether their spouses are considered close friends. They found that people who view their spouses as close friends feel more fulfilled than others. They also found the same situation among unmarried individuals who cohabit with their loved ones.
The situation of the single group is: they are a collective!
So they said, 'Friendship and marriage can replace each other, and whether married or unmarried, friendship is a more important factor.' The term 'unmarried' actually refers to unmarried couples. And 'single' either means unmarried or not considered human at all. Anyway, I think for these authors, 'single people' are just a bunch of undefined ink groups.
These authors feel that they are helping us understand causal relationships. And journalists, such as the one from Time magazine, are rushing to write causal claims, like telling people: if you want happiness and happiness, then marry a good friend.
But can this study really show that if you marry your best friend, you are happy?
As I mentioned before (and as anyone who has taken a section on research methodology, including these authors, should know), experimental research is the gold standard for making causal claims, and in experiments, the sample population is randomly assigned to different conditions. Obviously, there is no research that can validate the arguments proposed by these authors. People cannot be randomly married or remain single, and they cannot be randomly assigned a close friend like spouse.
So what the author explains to us is that people who claim their spouse/partner is a close friend live a happier life than those who do not consider their spouse/partner as their close friend. Can it be said that people are happier because they have a close friend like spouse? Perhaps when a spouse truly becomes a close friend, those who hope their spouse is a close friend will be happier; Perhaps someone is the kind of person who believes in foolish lyrics like 'You are everything to me' or 'I just want to be everything to you'; Perhaps married people whose best friends are not their spouses like this; Perhaps someone can force their spouse to become close friends, resulting in a lot less happiness for them; Perhaps some people don't like to call someone "that person"; Perhaps they prefer to have 'those people'.
Perhaps some people are more suitable for being single.
There are countless articles related to Grover and Helliwell's research that you haven't heard of yet, but they have been thrown into the media environment like garbage.
