Unequally into "Us": Characteristics of individuals in asymmetrically committed relationships

AntonioGuillem via BigStockPhotos

Our newest journal article is out. It's about the characteristics of individuals that are associated with it being more likely to be an asymmetrically committed relationship (ACR) compared to those not in such relationships. The study focuses on a sample of unmarried adults (aged 18 to mid thirties) in seriously involved relationships. Asymmetrically committed relationships are more likely to break up (especially if the woman is the less committed partner), more likely to be unhappy, more likely to include physical aggression (by either partner), and more likely to be found in cohabiting rather than dating, but not living together, relationships.

Here are a few highlights:

Those who are the less committed partner within an asymmetrically committed relationship are more likely to:

• perceive themselves as having good alternatives to their present relationship
• be attachment avoidant
• have parents who never married (but not more likely to have parents who divorced)

Those who are the more committed partner within an asymmetrically committed relationship are more likely to: 

• have anxious attachment 

Regarding commitment and attachment, those with attachment avoidance tend to hang back and those with anxious attachment tend to hang on. These are not surprising findings but it is important to observe them not only in regarding to mere high or low commitment, but regarding being in the higher or lower position of commitment in an asymmetrical relationship. 

There are other findings covered in the paper, including about numbers of prior sexual and/or cohabiting partners, infidelity, and so forth. 

The paper covers the existing literature on ACRs pretty deeply, so it provides a great way to get a solid sense of what is known on this topic. The paper also provides suggestions for working with individuals or couples in therapy or relationship education based on the existing, and growing, literature on asymmetrical commitment. 

To read the abstract, click here.

To see me discussing the study in a "video abstract" for the The journal Family Process, click here.

For an earlier summary on this blog of our research on unequally committed relationships, and their numerous negative characteristics, click here.

If you have no way to access the entire article and want to read it, email me at my university email address, on this page.

Citation: Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., Kelmer, G., Scott, S. B., Markman, H. J., & Fincham, F. D. (2018). Unequally into “Us”: Characteristics of individuals in asymmetrically committed relationships. Family Process. doi: 10.1111/famp.12397. Advance online version: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/famp.12397

Cohabitation is Common: An Update on Trends

Scott M. Stanley and Galena K. Rhoades

The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) put out a report in May on the demographics of cohabitation, with interesting contrasts among adults who are cohabiting, married, or neither. The report is based on a large, representative, national survey of U.S. adults aged 18 to 44, sampled between 2011 and 2015. To conduct the analyses, the authors (Nugent and Daugherty) selected only adults who had sexual intercourse with a partner of the opposite sex. They did that to ensure the groups were comparable in some respects regarding their histories in intimate relationships. The groups reflect those who were currently cohabiting, married, or neither at the time of being surveyed.

Cohabitation, Marriage, or Neither

The report shows that, as of 2015:  

• 17.1% of women and 15.9% of men were cohabiting
•  44.9% of women and 43.5% of men were married
• 38.0% of women and 40.6% of men were unmarried, and not cohabiting

This type of data does not address pathways over time, such as how many among the current cohabiters will eventually marry or how many of those not currently residing with a partner will eventually do either or neither. However, the data do provide estimates of the number of times people in the groups had cohabited outside of marriage up to the time they were surveyed.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of those currently married had cohabited before marriage with one or more partners.[i] Many of those currently unmarried or not cohabiting had cohabited before. Fifty-one (51.4%) of the women in that group had lived with one or more partners before, and 42.9% of the men had done likewise. Doing a little math, we estimate from the report that 64.5% of the entire sample has cohabited with a romantic partner at some point outside of marriage. That’s not the percent of people sampled who will cohabit outside of marriage at some point in their lives, though. The lifetime percent for this group would, of course, be higher. To get that number, you’d have to follow everyone in the sample until each person had either cohabited or died. That could be a long wait. (It might be that Facebook could eventually tell us those numbers.)

The data on premarital cohabitation history in this sample will be an under-estimate because the marrieds make up a higher percentage of the older people in that age range, and there is every reason to believe that the youngest, non-marrieds in the sample are more likely to cohabit prior to marriage than those who are older. Other estimates not based on this specific report are that the percentage of people living together before tying the knot is now at an all-time high of over 70%.[ii] We believe this figure will go higher still. There remain some groups, particularly the more traditionally religious, [iii] who will not live together before marriage, but otherwise, cohabitation is common and there is little stigma associated with it. 

Thus, a very high percentage of people in the U.S. cohabit outside of marriage. It is now normative behavior. Wendy Manning has estimated that, “The percentage of women ages 19-44 who have ever cohabited has increased by 82% over the past 23 years.” For those aged 30-34 in 2009-10, she has shown that 73% of women had already cohabited with someone. If you combine such numbers with the fact that, as Susan Brown has shown, there is a steady increase in cohabitation among older adults (after the death of a spouse or divorce),[iv] it is easy to imagine that the number of people who will eventually cohabit outside of marriage could reach 80%, or more.

Cohabitation has greatly increased in large measure because, while people are delaying marriage to ever greater ages, they are not delaying sex, living together, or childbearing. In fact, on the latter point, Manning noted in her recent address to the Population Association of America that almost all of the increase in non-marital births in the U.S. since 1980 has taken place in the context of cohabiting unions.

Cohabiting with more than one partner outside of marriage has also gone steadily higher.[v] The NCHS report does not demonstrate the trend, but the data reported do show that 44% of the currently-cohabiting group and 20% of the neither cohabiting nor married group has already lived with two or more partners. Ever higher levels of serial cohabitation mean that more people are on one of the pathways strongly associated with risks for family instability or divorce.[vi] Prior research has shown that serial cohabitation is strongly associated with economic disadvantage among unmarried couples, [vii] lower odds of marriage, and increased odds of poor marital outcomes, but serial cohabitation is growing rapidly among different population groups.[viii]

Increasing rates of cohabitation as well as serial cohabitation might be of no special consequence except for the point noted above, that many births now occur in cohabiting unions. Some percentage of these couples have a long-term commitment similar to marriage, but, on average, cohabiting parents are much more likely than married parents to break up, [ix] resulting in increasing odds of family instability for children. Much of this risk is due to selection, a subject we will come to below.

Other Characteristics of these Groups

Other findings from the NCHS report are consistent with the way that basic family patterns have increasingly diverged around cultural, educational, and economic lines. For example:

• 47.9% of cohabiting women had household incomes less than 150% of the federal poverty line compared to 25.6% of married women
• 36.1% cohabiting men had incomes less than 150% of the federal poverty line compared to 21.2% of married men
• 25.2% cohabiting women had incomes over 300% of the federal poverty line compared to 48.1% of marrieds
• 32.4% of cohabiting men had incomes over 300% of the federal poverty line compared to 52.4% of marrieds

This is one of the more striking examples of the fact that a lot of cohabiting women and men tend to be poor compared to married women and men. The data on education follow the same pattern, of course. Married people had the most education followed by those who are not married or cohabiting, with cohabiting people reporting lower levels of education than the other two groups. For example:

• 25.3% of cohabiting women had a bachelor’s degree compared to 43% of married women
• 16.2% of cohabiting men had a bachelor’s degree compared to 36.5% of married men

While the education levels of many of the cohabiters in this sample will go higher over time, the findings from many studies show that cohabitation (particularly with cohabiting relationships not leading directly to marriage) is associated with being more disadvantaged, on average.[x] The data are consistent with the story of a class divide around marriage and cohabitation.[xi]

Attitudes and Experiences

This NCHS report also presents differences in the three groups based on attitudes and experiences about unmarried sex, cohabitation, and having children outside of marriage. Not surprisingly, both of the non-married groups are less traditional in their views than those who are married. These findings are reflected in the table below from the report. [click on it to view it]

While there are clear differences, large majorities of every group believe that having and raising children without being married is fine; this is endorsed by the greatest number of cohabiters. Of course, that finding would have been quite different decades ago. Marrieds are the most disapproving of cohabitation outside of marriage, but even most of the married group agreed that it is all right to do so.

Majorities of every group also believe that living together before marriage may help prevent divorce. This is of particular interest to us given our research related to this question.[xii] The percentage believing this was highest for those currently cohabiting.

This notion has had wide acceptance since at least the mid-1990s, when three-fifths of high school students believed that, “It is usually a good idea for a couple to live together before getting married in order to find out whether they really get along.”[xiii] It is worth noting that there is virtually no evidence in support of this belief. However, it is also fair to note that there used be a lot clearer evidence to the contrary.

Regardless, we believe that there is considerable evidence that some patterns of living together before marriage are associated with increased risks for less successful marriages. We do think experiences and choices matter for future outcomes. This assertion is mildly controversial among those who study cohabitation. To be sure, there is a mountain of evidence for selection in both who cohabits and who will cohabit in the riskier ways. What that means is that people who are already at greater risk for worse outcomes in relationships because of things like family background, disadvantage, or individual vulnerabilities are also more likely to do any of the following: cohabit and not marry, cohabit before having clear, mutual plans to marry, or cohabit with a number of different partners over time. There is plenty of evidence of other patterns in the NCHS report related to cohabiters being more select for various relationship risks. Consider the following findings.

Relationship Risks Associated with Cohabitation

Cohabiters were more likely (74%) than those currently married (56%) to have had sexual intercourse before the age of 18. Cohabiting women were also more likely to report ever having an unintended birth (43.5%) compared to married women (23.9%). These types of patterns are associated with life-long risk factors already present in the lives of many people. Of course, you could argue that such differences also reflect choices people make that have potentially causal, life-altering consequences. Such debates are endless, but we do not doubt a huge role for selection in all of this. And yet, we believe there often are causal elements impacting life outcomes related to the experience of cohabitation.

First, it has been shown that cumulative cohabiting experience changes peoples’ beliefs about marriage.[xiv] While that research is older, the theory behind the research is compelling. Much research shows we learn from experiences and experiences change our beliefs. We believe that the increase in cohabitation, serial cohabitation, and premarital cohabitation has led to consistent downward trends in belief that marriage is special.

Second, cohabitation makes it harder to break up, net of everything else. Because of the inertia of living together, some people get stuck longer than they otherwise would in relationships they might have left or left sooner. In fact, we believe some people marry someone they would otherwise have left because cohabitation made it too hard to move on. Inertia should be the greatest problem for couples who had not decided beforehand on their future, such as by already having mutual plans to marry (e.g., engagement) or, of course, by first marrying. While the increased risk can be modest, the prediction is consistently supported with at least seven reports using six different samples, showing that those who start cohabiting before deciding to marry report lower average marital quality and are more likely to divorce.[xv] This added risk is compounded by the fact that most couples slide into cohabiting rather than make a clear decisions about what it means and what their futures may hold.[xvi]

Third, cohabitation is increasingly a context for childbearing. Since cohabiting parental unions are relatively unstable, the increasing number of couples who break up in such unions will mean more people entering future relationships with the challenge of children in tow.

Evidence of selection abounds but so do reasons for believing that experiences and personal choices are relevant to life outcomes.

Complexity Abounds

These ever-changing patterns in relationship and family development are complex, and they do not operate in the same way for all. For example, there is research suggesting that cohabiting experiences may lead to more positive attitudes about marriage among young, African American adults. More broadly, as Sharon Sassler and Amanda Miller argue in Cohabitation Nation, there are various social class disparities that impact things like if and how soon a person will move in with a partner. Some pathways will lead to different sets of outcomes for different people, and some people have more ability (economic and personal) to avoid paths that increase the odds of poor outcomes.[xvii]

The extraordinary changes of the past four decades reflect how ordinary cohabitation has become. There is no a simple story here, only an ever-unfolding one of increasingly complex families.

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[i] It cannot be determined from these data if this means that 67% would have cohabited before marriage with their spouse, but presumably, that is a reasonable estimate for those doing so.

[ii] Hemez, P. & Manning, W. D. (2017). Thirty years of change in women's premarital cohabitation experience. Family Profiles, FP-17-05. Bowling Green, OH: National Center for Family & Marriage Research. That’s for the United States, but the rates are similarly high in all industrialized nations. In a recent address to the Population Association of America, I believe Manning put that number at around 75%.

[iii] There is a nuance here for this new report. The group that is excluded by the selection criteria (about having had sexual intercourse with someone of the opposite sex) are those in that age range who have neither married nor had sexual intercourse up to this point in their lives. Because of that, the estimate of 67% living together before marriage for this particular age range at that point in history would be a little high. We cannot say how high but do not doubt that the percent who will live together before marriage of the current generation of young adults is now over 70%.

[iv] Brown, S. L., Bulanda, J. R., & Lee, G. R. (2012). Transitions into and out of cohabitation in later life. Journal of Marriage & Family, 74(4), 774-793. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2012.00994.x

[v] This trend is noted in the NCHS report but the report itself does not present data on that trend. The authors cite earlier studies on the increase in serial cohabitation: Cohen J, & Manning W. (2010). The relationship context of premarital serial cohabitation. Social Science Research, 39, 766 – 776.; Lichter, D. T., Turner, R.N., & Sassler S. (2010). National estimates of the rise in serial cohabitation. Social Science Research, 39, 754 – 765.

[vi] Lichter, D. T., Turner, R.N., & Sassler S. (2010). National estimates of the rise in serial cohabitation. Social Science Research, 39, 754 – 765.

[vii] Ibid Lichter et al. (2010); Lichter, D., & Qian, Z. (2008). Serial cohabitation and the marital life course. Journal of Marriage & Family, 70, 861-878.

[viii] Ibid Lichter et al. (2010).

[ix] “Only one out of three children born to cohabiting parents remains in a stable family through age 12, in contrast to nearly three out of four children born to married parents.”: Manning, W. D. (2015). Cohabitation and child wellbeing. The Future of Children, 25(2), 51–66; see also McLanahan, S., & Beck, A. N. (2010). Parental relationships in fragile families. The Future of Children, 20(2), 17-37.; McLanahan, S., & Beck, A. N. (2010). Parental relationships in fragile families. The Future of Children, 20(2), 17-37.

[x] It is important to note that this type of data also cannot distinguish between cohabiters who will transition into marriage with their current (or a future) cohabiting partner and those who will not.

[xi] See for example: Smock, P., & Greenland, F.R. (2010). Diversity in pathways to parenthood: Patterns, implications, and emerging research directions. Journal of Marriage & Family, 72, 576-593.

[xii]  If you want to dig in pretty deeply on theory and research from us on this subject, you can start here or here, and find summaries and links to many (non-gated) papers you can read if you like.

[xiii] Thornton, A., & Young-DeMarco, L. (2001). Four decades of trends in attitudes toward family issues in the United States: The 1960s through the 1990s. Journal of Marriage & Family, 63, 1009-1037. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.01009.x

[xiv] Axinn, W. G., and Barber, J. S. (1997). Living arrangements and family formation attitudes in early adulthood. Journal of Marriage & Family 59, 595-611.

[xv] In addition to the list of the body of studies on the marriage-plans-timing effect (partial list following, full list here), a recent study shows that relationship quality is highest (on average) for marrieds and lowest for cohabiting couples without plans to marry, with marrieds who cohabited before marriage and cohabiters who currently had plans in between those two groups: Brown, S., Manning, W. D., & Payne, K. K. (2017). Relationships quality among cohabiting versus married couples. Journal of Family Issues, 38, 1730 – 1753. (First appeared in advance online publication in 2015: https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X15622236); Examples of studies with the engagement/plans timing effect: Kline, G. H., Stanley, S. M., Markman, H. J., Olmos-Gallo, P. A., St. Peters, M., Whitton, S. W., & Prado, L. (2004). Timing is everything: Pre-engagement cohabitation and increased risk for poor marital outcomes. Journal of Family Psychology, 18, 311-318.; Rhoades, G. K., Stanley, S. M., & Markman, H. J. (2009). The pre-engagement cohabitation effect: A replication and extension of previous findings. Journal of Family Psychology, 23, 107-111.; Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., Amato, P. R., Markman, H. J., & Johnson, C. A. (2010). The timing of cohabitation and engagement: Impact on first and second marriages. Journal of Marriage & Family, 72, 906-918.

[xvi] See Lindsay, J. M. (2000, online version came out in 2014). An ambiguous commitment: Moving into a cohabiting relationship. Journal of Family Studies, 6(1), 120-134.; Manning, W. D., & Smock, P. J. (2005).  Measuring and modeling cohabitation: New perspectives from qualitative data. Journal of Marriage & Family, 67, 989 - 1002.; Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Fincham, F. D. (2011). Understanding romantic relationships among emerging adults: The significant roles of cohabitation and ambiguity. In F. D. Fincham & M. Cui (Eds.), Romantic relationships in emerging adulthood (pp. 234-251). New York: Cambridge University Press.

[xvii] For example: Sassler, S., Michelmore, K., & Qian, Z. (2018). Transitions from sexual relationships into cohabitation and beyond. Demography, 55, 511 - 534.

Cueless

Teens and young adults are showing sharp increases in anxiety and depression. Jean Twenge, author of iGen, has drawn a great deal of attention to these trends. Here, I describe her argument and then build on it to suggest that social cuelessness may be contributing to the problems.

The Trends

Anxiety and depression have increased substantially among teens in the U.S. over the past 5 years or so[i], trends also seen in other advanced economies.[ii] Twenge (@jean_twenge) wrote about this phenomenon in an article in The Atlantic as well as in her book. While such problems have been increasing for decades (see another media story on this featuring Twenge in 2009), there does seem to be particularly sharp uptick of late. Twenge suggests that wide adoption of smart phones is the primary culprit. In the Atlantic piece, she writes:

It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades.

Twenge believes that the dominant driver of these effects is social comparison. Social comparison speaks to the fact that we are happy or not based both on how our lives are going as well as on how we think the lives of others are going. With humans, it’s never just about me, it’s always about me among them. Smart phones, combined with social media tools such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, provide endless opportunities for social comparison. Again, quoting Twenge from her article in the Atlantic:

For all their power to link kids day and night, social media also exacerbate the age-old teen concern about being left out.

While she may or may not be correct, it’s a good hypothesis.

Consider Melissa, a 16-year-old from New Jersey who is tuned in and locked on. On some days, she’s out with her friends doing what friends do—talking, laughing, sharing videos and pictures from their lives and also the internet. When not out with friends, Melissa is at home, by herself. Sort of. She’s never really by herself because her phone is always with her. Like so many others, and maybe especially other teens and young adults, she spends a lot of time monitoring what’s happening “out there,” with special attention to the lives of those in her social network—as well as the Kardashians.

What does Melissa see as she stares through her phone out into the world? She sees people having fun, doing exciting things, touting accomplishments and, worst of all, she sees evidence of people being together, without her.

Do people normally post their boring moments, failures, and comments on their isolation on social media? Okay, yes, some do that. There are plenty of YouTube sensations featuring people sharing their misery. Schadenfreude is even more common. Of course, there is the mundane stuff that plenty of people share on social media. It’s fascinating to know what someone got to eat for lunch. Actually, not so much—at least not to me.

More often, what we see are indicators of success, connection, and prime-time “in-group” experiences. In addition to feeling left out, anyone with a smart phone or other device now can watch endless documentation of how successful or gorgeous their peers are—and feel worse about themselves by the moment. Instant dis-gratification. (I just made that word up. So, no, you cannot go look it up on your phone right now. Keep reading. Focus.) If you were a little fragile already about your self-esteem and development as a younger human, you’d be primed only to notice the stuff that makes you feel bad about yourself.

Making the situation worse is the fact that app and device designers are perfecting ways to keep you from looking away. The whole system is literally addiction by design (though, I can accept arguments either way about whether this fits a true addiction model). The power of devices to capture our attentions has led to mounting concerns about how seriously distracted we are if our phones are anywhere nearby, with evidence that just having phone nearby while having a meal with friends or family reduces how much we enjoy doing so.[iii] Everything about phones and apps is designed to say, “notice me.” Your mind wants to check that you are not missing something important. (Give me a moment while I check my Twitter account. Wow. Just since I started proofing this draft, I got liked several times. That’s so nice. I matter. Noticefication. Follow me: @DecideOrSlide)

I think Twenge is correct that these dynamics are part of the mix in the rise in teen anxiety and depression. She also notes other factors that doubtless play significant roles, including loss of sleep, lack of interest in going out beyond the home, and reduced face-to-face contact with friends. There may be so many other factors in play. Maybe the trends in anxiety and depression will start to move downward, soon. Who knows, but it’s not difficult to believe that we are living through one of the most extraordinary changes in how humans interact in history.

My Hypothesis

I think increases in anxiety and depression for teens and young adults may be exacerbated by cuelessness. Cue, not clue. I think the rise in cuelessness is consequential.

In the Age of Ambiguity, Cuelessness abounds in Dating and Mating

I (along with colleagues like Galena Rhoades) have argued that one of the most profound changes in dating and mating over the past 40 years is the rise of ambiguity.[iv] There used to be much more structure—more steps and stages and publicly understood markers—to indicate where people were at or headed in their romantic relationships.

I think this trend toward ambiguity is motivated. One aspect of this argument is that ambiguity feels safer than clarity in an age where people are uncertain of relationships lasting. That means romantic (and sexual) relationships form in an environment with a paucity of cues about who is really interested in who, who is committed, and to what degree. Sure, there are still cues (engagement remains a big signal of commitment), but not like there used to be. In plays and movies, scripts specify cues for specific actions, scenes, transitions, and lines. Dating and mating have become relatively scriptless, and scriptlessness feeds cuelessness.

My colleagues and I have written a lot about ambiguity in romantic relationships. If you want to read more: here, here, or here, or way back here.  

In addition to the specific cuelessness of modern dating and mating, it would not surprise me if the increasingly, generally ambiguous pathway into adulthood on many dimensions contributes to the mental health of emerging adults. However, those domains, along with dating and mating, have been going through large changes for some time. Twenge may be onto something to suggest that the recent sharp rise in anxiety and depression could be linked to the appearance of smart phones in our lives. Now, I will double down on that idea.

Devices and Social Media are Optimized for Fostering Experimental Neurosis

There is a classic series of studies in the history of behaviorism (classical conditioning, specifically) that focused on inducement of experimental neurosis in animals. The physiologist Pavlov is believed to be the first to observe and widely discuss this phenomenon. He noticed how discomforted his laboratory dogs were when initially learning to discriminate between stimuli that meant food was coming versus not. Pavlov was famous for getting a neutral stimulus to produce salivation by pairing it with the original stimulus (food). You can make a name for yourself by studying spit if you can generalize your argument.

Pavlov, and many others, started testing what would happen to dogs (or other animals) as they made it increasingly difficult to discriminate between stimuli. In the most famous paradigm, he would have pictures of circles indicating food was coming while pictures of various forms of ellipses would mean no food was coming—and then he made the ellipses increasingly like the circles so that it was hard for the dogs to discern the difference. The dogs would break down. They would get agitated and howl or curl up and get passive, or otherwise freak out.

Think a moment about how stressed you might get if, all of a sudden, you could no longer discern whether a stop light was telling you to stop, or to go, or to floor it. (That’s the true meaning of yellow, right?)

A pretty good definition of experimental neurosis is given in the TheFreeDictionry: “a behavior disorder produced experimentally, as when an organism is required to make a discrimination of extreme difficulty and "breaks down" in the process.”

That’s cuelessness. It’s not simply the complete absence of cues. The dogs received cues but they had trouble getting them. Cuelessness also comes about when there is an inability to reliably discern the meaning of cues you can plainly see. Apply that thought to how intently a teen or young adult might be trying to decode stimuli about their social situation as reflected in the soft glow of their phone.

“Is he really interested in me?”

“Did she mean to cut me out of this invitation?”

“Why won’t he follow me?”

“Why didn’t she ‘like’ my post?”

“How did all my friends end up getting together tonight without me knowing about it?”

“What does that winking smiley face really mean?”

Back in the heyday of research on experimental neurosis, another method for inducing it was by  simply increasing the delay in time between the signal and getting the food. This had a similar negative effect on the dogs. How often have you heard about people becoming fraught over waiting for someone they are interested in to get back to them, especially by text, about what was happening next? “Is he going to get back to me about getting together?” “Why hasn’t she responded to my text message, yet? It’s been hours.” The agony of such delays in the dating world are well described in Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg’s book, Modern Romance. It’s a thing, and it’s all stimulus and delayed response or non-response. Some of this comes from fears that a quick response would be too unambiguous, and could mean one had caught feelings or was desperate or was, you know, actually interested in the other. Clarity is so uncool.

I think something like experimental neurosis could be contributing to the rise in anxiety and depression among teens and young adults. Everyone functions best when there are reliable cues about things that they care about the most. At work. At home. At play. In love.

Can You Hear Me Now? Not Really.

Quiz: What’s the number one thing that teens and young adults do not do on their phones? Calling people. It is no accident that messaging systems on our devices now have a proliferation of emojis and special effects. Why’s that stuff there? First, per my earlier point: emojis are part of the nuclear arms race of features designed to make sure you cannot look away from your phone. Second, typed words can be misunderstood, particularly in cryptic messages. Perhaps you have experienced a time when you realized some friend, loved one, or colleague got the wrong idea from what you wrote in email or text, when that would not have happened had you made a phone call. Emojis are supposed to add some emotional information to the message, but do they? Maybe a little, but hold that thought. I won’t make you wait too long. J

The author of a new series of studies, psychologist Michael Kraus, concludes that there is much more information about emotion in voices than in facial expressions.[v] Kraus is particularly interested in empathic accuracy, which he argues is a foundational element in healthy social connection. In fact, he noted that, “a dearth of empathic accuracy is a common symptom

of many psychological disorders.” Kraus further notes that speech is a “particularly powerful channel for perceiving the emotions of others.” In fact, cues in speech convey a lot of information about emotion even when the receiver cannot understand the words.

Sure, there is plenty of information in someone’s face, but Kraus argues that there is more in the voice. Contrast that with how little emotional information can be in a text message. Sure, texts can convey 100% of the relevant information when the point is merely to say, “I’ll meet you at 3:15 at the coffee shop at 1^st and Elm.” But a text is going to be pretty thin on information about the true emotion the other is feeling. Since texting conveys relatively limited information about emotion, it may be pretty limited in fostering empathy and understanding when something more is at stake. (That does not mean that texts are not useful, including for teens at higher risk.[vi])  

Teens and young adults are particularly tuned to their social networks, including whether or not they matter to others. We all are, but it seems reasonable to posit that this is an intense dynamic when younger. The paradox here is that, while masses of information move across electronic devices, there often is not a lot of there, there, when it matters most—such as when trying to decode if someone is interested as a partner or actually cares if you have been left out.

In the specific domain of love and attraction, we live in the age of ambiguity, and devices and social media are not optimally designed to clear things up.  

Back to smiley faces and winking emojis. You might ask, why aren’t emojis as useful for conveying emotions as hearing someone’s voice? Obviously, one point is that it’s a simpler system. If a voice conveys more information about emotion than a real face, how much less information is contained in an emoji?

But I have a better answer than that. It’s easy to send a little smiling face no matter what you are feeling. Complex systems of lie detection may yet be based on voice-tone but they are not ever going be based on emojis. When you send an emoji, you could be happy or placating and send the very same text with a smile. The emoji one sends is the emoji one intends to send. If there is a reason to mask true feelings or to mislead, it’s so easy to do that in text—in voice, not so easy.

If you get on the phone with someone you know who is having a bad day or feeling something else strongly, you are vastly more likely to detect it. It’s hard to hide what’s real in the voice because voice is cueful not cueless. In fact, if you are a teenager and something is wrong, and you want your parent to help (and, if you have a parent you trust), you should call. Your parent will hear something in your voice that you can hardly hide, and I think it will change the nature of what happens next, usually for the better.

While I’d like to suggest that we all people up and talk more, I know that idea is quaint. It seems entirely possible that texting has become preferred, in part, because it allows everyone to be doing two or more things at once, without having to give away the fact that we can be reading something on the web or watching TV all while sending some texts back and forth with another person. Last week, there was a few minutes where I was texting with my wife, one of my sons, and a colleague—all at the same time. A conference call would not have worked.

There is a lot in favor of text, emails, and social media posts because they are asynchronous. Those on the receiving end do not have to respond in the same moment as when the message is sent. But the cost of the convenience is a thinning out of the information available, especially about emotion. And emotion is the good stuff of social connection, as Kraus notes.

I should note that a clear message does not have to be the one you wanted to receive. William and Sonya are college juniors who were “dating” for a couple of months when William broke it off by text. Sonya was not pleased to get the text but at least he didn’t ghost her. Even though breaking up by text may seem immature, not to mention heartless, at least the message Sonya received was clear. Pavlov’s dog would rather know for sure that no food is coming than be in distress trying to get the signal straight.

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My hypothesis is that the current, substantial increases in anxiety and depression among teens and young adults may be exacerbated by decreases in the reliability of information about relationships that can be found in devices, messaging, and social media. I’ve argued before that upcoming generations may have more attachment insecurities than prior ones because family instability has likely continued to increase (even though divorce rates have trended down). If so, that could mix with the growing cuelessness of society to increase the challenges for young people. It might be a blip and the kids will be alright. It might not be.

It’s just a hypothesis. I wanted to write it up because all these themes happened to be colliding in my head within the same week, and they seemed to revolve around something. More broadly, the trends could be nothing and these ideas may be off track. Also, I didn’t set out to pose solutions. I leave you cueless. It’s the age we live in, I guess.

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[i] For examples of news reports on this, see here and here and here.

[ii] Here’s a news article from the U.K., as an example.

[iii] Dwyer, R., Kushlev, K., & Dunn, E. (2017). Smartphone use undermines enjoyment of face-to-face social interactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Advance online publication.  

[iv] I link to various accessible pieces later in this section. Some of the scholarly references for this point include: Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Markman, H. J. (2006). Sliding vs. Deciding: Inertia and the premarital cohabitation effect. Family Relations, 55, 499-509.; Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Whitton, S. W. (2010). Commitment: Functions, formation, and the securing of romantic attachment. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 2, 243-257.; Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., & Fincham, F. D. (2011). Understanding romantic relationships among emerging adults: The significant roles of cohabitation and ambiguity. In F. D. Fincham & M. Cui (Eds.), Romantic relationships in emerging adulthood (pp. 234-251). New York: Cambridge University Press.; Stanley, S. M., Rhoades, G. K., Scott, S. B., Kelmer, G., Markman, H. J., & Fincham, F. D. (2016). Asymmetrically committed relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Advance online publication. DOI: 10.1177/0265407516672013

[v] The author, Michael Kraus, showed that there is more information that enhances empathy in the voice than in the face. He theorizes that people often intentionally communicate their feelings through voice. I am not as sure about that point as much as the idea that it may be hard to hide one’s feelings from being expressed in tones of the voice. Regardless of that point, Kraus suggests that there is a lot of emotional information in voice and less in the face. And, I’d argue that there is vastly less in text and email. In an age of ambiguity in relationships, that may be exactly what is preferred.  Kraus, M. W. (2017). Voice-only communication enhances empathic accuracy. American Psychologist, 72(7), 644-654.

[vi] A study on a convenience sample of high risk teens suggested that they were less anxious and depressed on the days that they texted more, not less. However, the same study found that, on days they texted more, they also had more attention and conduct problems. There is a lot of complexity in all this and much to be sorted out. Citation: George, M. J., Russell, M. A., Piontak, J. R., & Odgers, C. L. (2017). Concurrent and subsequent associations between daily digital technology use and high-risk adolescents’ mental health symptoms. Child Development. Advance online version.