Yeah, yeah. You’re tired of hearing of all the wondrous benefits of marriage (especially if you’ve been through a failed one or two already). And who can blame you? A good marriage seems more and more like some ideal, rather than the reality.
And yet, another study published this week shows the health benefits of a happy marriage — lower blood pressure. Of note is that bad marriages don’t help you — you’ll actually have a higher blood pressure, as well as being single.
Oddly, the researchers did not examine people who were in relationships, long-term or short-term. That seems like a natural question to ask in the context of such research. Is it the bonds of marriage that hold blood pressure lower, or is it simply a positive, supportive relationship with a significant other? They did look at a person’s social support network, but that’s not really analogous to marriage. This seems like a glaring oversight.
Could this be attributed to the fact that the lead researcher is from Brigham Young University, a Christian college focused on things like “family values” and marriage? And the research would be less compelling (and make for less interesting headlines) if they simply found any good, healthy relationship helped both people in the relationship to live more healthy and enjoyable lives?
In the end, the researchers really can’t answer their own question, since they didn’t examine the effect of non-marital romantic relationships.
The data would likely show that regardless of whether a matrimonial vow was taken, people in stable, positive romantic relationships with significant others benefit both physically and mentally — stuff of conventional wisdom.
Reference:
Holt-Lunstad, J., Birmingham, W. & Jones, B.Q. (2008). Is There Something Unique about Marriage? The Relative Impact of Marital Status, Relationship Quality, and Network Social Support on Ambulatory Blood Pressure and Mental Health. Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
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Another Marriage Benefit: Lower Blood Pressure (3/21/2008)
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5 Comments to
“Another Marriage Benefit: Lower Blood Pressure”
Family values propaganda notwithstanding, this sounds like another example of confusing causation with correlation. Just because marriage is linked to lower blood pressure doesn’t necessarily mean there is a causal link. Does marriage lead to lower blood pressure or are people with lower blood pressure more likely to get married?
for the comment above I would have to say that most studies are solely based on correlation because we can’t control all factors that would make a significant impact on the control variables. Therefore, just as any other significant correlation study, we don’t simply discard it because of it’s philosophical implications of causation may be controversial. As we have seen with many other studies, there are things we have to take into consideration even if they are related to correlation and not causation. It’s just like the question of what was came first, the egg or the chicken. It all depends of our own personal perspective.
It matters in terms of how the results are interpreted. You can’t talk about the “benefits” of committed relationships without making causal assumptions. As it stands, these results don’t support that.
I wouldn’t say the researchers are suggesting marriage is the cause of the lower blood pressure. Instead, they suggest factors such as understood acceptance, positive feedback and support, etc. are factors leading to the lower blood pressure. Their point is that these factors appear to occur more commonly, naturally in marriage (or, as I argue, any long-term committed romantic relationship that’s positive), than do amongst just friends or in a person’s single life.
So.. would this reasearch mean that a married person with high blood pressure is in a bad relationship?
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Mar 2008
