Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The Latest in McGill's Contribution to Knowledge: Fidelity Testing?

Interesting piece at the NYT: there is a apparently a genetic component to a happy marriage.  A certain variation in a gene is associated with men who are less likely to be married and are more like to have both serious marital problems and unhappy wives (sounds like Tiger and Elin, huh?).  The piece goes onto show that more than genes are involved:
Other McGill studies confirmed differences in how men and women react to such threats. In one, attractive actors or actresses were brought in to flirt with study participants in a waiting room. Later, the participants were asked questions about their relationships, particularly how they would respond to a partner’s bad behavior, like being late and forgetting to call.
Men who had just been flirting were less forgiving of the hypothetical bad behavior, suggesting that the attractive actress had momentarily chipped away at their commitment. But women who had been flirting were more likely to be forgiving and to make excuses for the man, suggesting that their earlier flirting had triggered a protective response when discussing their relationship.

Wow, psychology sounds like fun!

So, this leads to the following question: should women(since the study was done in men) ask their men to take a genetic test before marriage to see if they are likely to be a lousy husband?

HT to EJ for the tweet-link.

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