FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
This isn’t about who wins the argument – but a study of hot marital fights indicates that when the wife calms down, the couples are more happy. Researcher Lian Bloch of the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology in Palo Alto found that in a study she did at the University of California, Berkeley. She looked at data that included recorded arguments by long-time husbands and wives.
“The marriages that were the happiest were the ones in which the wives were able to calm down quickly during marital conflict.”
Bloch says calm wives were able to look constructively for ways to deal with the emotions and talk about ways to solve the problems. Happiness didn’t change if the husband calmed down quickly.
The study in the journal Emotion was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
