Through a Portal in Time

In my last post, I noted the suggestion made by some to have marriage licenses with certain terms, wherein couples would need to renew their marriage licenses periodically. While this is not yet the law anywhere as far as I know, it is functionally the type of committed romantic relationship many people have these days. Most people want to marry and most people will. But ever greater, large numbers of couples will not marry but will live together and raise a family together, before or without marriage. Perhaps unknown between the partners, each may be periodically be re-making their commitment to the other, internally. There are some people who believe this is the way it should be, even at an almost day-to-day level. To some, it’s a romantic ideal that means each partner is there again, each new day, because he or she chose to be. “I’m here with you and you with me, and we can both see from this that we love and live on together.”

That process, or something like it, is part of marriage as well other relationships. Periodically, people committed to any person, project, or thing will internally reset their sense of commitment—especially if the path taken has included challenging times. I mean, by that, gut check times where you may need to remind yourself that “I committed to this and I believe in this, and I’m going to give it my best.” Unless you have a perfectly blissful union (married or not), and you’ve had no significant challenges, you understand this dynamic. It’s part of what actually builds meaningful, lasting love in a world where relationships are made up of imperfect people.

What does the word “portal” means to you. Perhaps you think of a walking through a tunnel. Maybe you imagine walking through a field-level tunnel of a stadium, like you see in big football games sometimes, emerging into the light of the stadium, and to the cheers of the crowd. Perhaps you are a sci-fi fan, and you think about change-in-place portals (Beam me up, Scottie) or change-in-time portals (H. G. Wells’ time machine). I’m focusing here on change-in-me portals.

Whatever comes to your mind, portals have this characteristic: They are a way of transitioning from one place to another. In some instances, they are the actual pathway and in some instances they are, metaphorically, the pathway. A wedding is a metaphorical portal into a new life.

While we (our research team) do not have quantitative data on this, we have heard numerous cohabiters who are marrying comment that they are not quite sure what they are going to do to make the transition more of a, well, transition. Those that espouse this want the change from not-married to married to be really clear but it ends up feeling sort of blurry. I wish I could tell you how many people struggle with this and what most who do end up doing about it. Maybe I’ll have that data in the future. Of course, there are, I am sure, a great many others who do not worry about this.

I think many people, though, deeply desire for major life transitions to be actually transformative. They want what goes into the portal to come out the other end something different; something fuller and richer and more founded.

How does this concept apply to the renewable marriage license idea? The renewable marriage license idea fairly screams out that there is not anything like a permanent transition going on. I like to be very realistic, and I know that the transition into marriage is very much not a permanent transition for many. Many will be transitioning out of that marriage one day. Some, like Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries, transition out in a matter of days. But, I’ll also say this. Because of the nature of commitment, the sense that it is intended to be permanent is really where a lot of the power lies in going through the portal into marriage.

Slowly but steadily, particularly among those who do not graduate from college, marriage is disappearing. Sometimes that is partly because of a diminished sense that marriage matters. Sometimes it’s because of a difficulty in achieving the conditions one feels are necessary to make a marriage work; for example, having a job.

Back to the main point. I believe that the reason why wedding rituals are common around the world (even if weakening today) is that they function as portals through which two people enter and two people exit, but different from when they entered. Two separate identities enter the portal and three identities come out the other side—you, me, and us. Psychologically, this transformation may have happened far earlier, or for some, it happens most powerfully because of the ritual of a wedding. For others, there is no big ritual to see but something happens inside, maybe along the way to the justice of the peace. Let me amplify that a moment. I’ve heard some people say their transition into marriage was more special and meaningful because of wedding with all the rituals. I’ve heard others, however, say that the very reason going to a justice of the peace was most meaningful was because they avoided all the stress and pomp of the wedding industry. And, just to be clear, I am sure there are couples where the inner transition happens and they never marry or do not marry for a long time to come. But I also think that the whole idea of marriage—and all the ways it happens—is really founded on making the inward change an outward act.

For some, there is no transformation with whatever transition is happening. (That’s close to one of the core applications of the principle of sliding versus deciding.) In some instances—maybe in a lot of instances these days—one or both partner avoid anything like a portal taking them from one place to another because one or both know that they are not interested in a life altering transition—at least not with this partner. Maybe the transitional object of their desire will come along in the future.

The nature of major commitments in life is to be transformative. I don’t mean magical, but I do mean symbolic of the inner process of becoming something more than two. So, in the case of love of this sort in life, the deepest desire many have is for transformation that adds something. In contrast, think about a meat grinder. It’s a transition alright, and things do change from going in one end to coming out the other. But what comes out is also nothing more and nothing less than what went in, albeit in a different looking form.

Next time, some more thoughts focused on the nature of rituals and transformation.

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Bid Adieu or Renew? Thoughts on Renewable Marriage Licenses

It seems like so many things are renewable. If I do not call Verizon and instruct them otherwise, my mobile plan will automatically renew whenever my current contract is up. My subscription to PC Magazine will renew, also, but only if I send in the little card with a check. With my mobile plan, inertia leads to renewing in that I do not have to act and do something for renewal to occur. It’s automatic. I have to act for it not to renew. In the second case, my PC Magazine subscription will only renew if I send in a check demonstrating my end of commitment to the ongoing relationship. The first type of renewal is what I like to call “inertialized.” The second type is “electable,” as in there being a process of re-election.

Both of these examples portray a commitment process. A choice point came and went, noticed or not, and one path or another was taken, and one left behind. In one case, I passively continue on the same path and, in another, I actively re-up.

What about commitment in marriage? Which is it? Inertialized renewable or elected renewable? This is an interesting question.

This might become a very real question couples marrying in Mexico City face in the near future.

Some assemblymen in Mexico City have proposed that marriage licenses be renewable, sort of like drivers’ licenses. A colleague of mine at DU, Rachel Miller, sent me the link to the story which you can click on here. So, here’s the idea. When you marry, you choose how frequently you want your marriage license to come up for renewal. The minimum is every two years. So, if you so choose, on your anniversary in every other year you not only celebrate but you decide all over again whether you have some “still do” in your “I Do.”

Before you call me crazy for even saying someone is thinking about this, read this quote from the Reuters story:

“The proposal is, when the two-year period is up, if the relationship is not stable or harmonious, the contract simply ends,” Leonoel Luna, the Mexico City assemblyman who co-authored the bill, told Reuters. “You wouldn’t have to go through the torturous process of divorce.”

The assemblyman suggests that the great value in this idea is that a marriage that is not fairing so well could end without the ugly or difficult process of divorce. I’ll come back to that in an upcoming post. I think the idea is actually commonly believed and I’ll explain why.

Back to renewable marriage licenses. I have some practical questions. I wonder if you could send out invitations, asking others to attend your renewal decision ceremony. Imagine your friends and family proudly standing around you as you sign the card, pay a fee, and put the renewal card in an envelope to go out in tomorrow’s mail. How could you even sleep through that night? What if it gets lost in the mail? And another thing. Can you get registered for gifts somewhere for a renewal? I also wonder if people would be a lot nicer to their mate as renewals approached, especially if they were uncertain that the renewal they hope for would be a slam dunk.

A little more seriously, I have a few thoughts and I also have a keyboard, so here they come.

Here begins the “duh” or “no kidding” paragraph, but these points are always worth mentioning lest another think one is not in touch with reality. Marriages do not always work out, and for any number of reasons. Some marriages should never have come about in the first place. Worst of all, some marriages are dangerous and damaging. Yet, in general, the whole reason that marriage does work and offers advantages in life (many advantages, on average) is because the commitment is considered to be once and for all. It is this idea that is the core of what marriage is about. Here are a few advantages of settled commitment:

1. You don’t burn a lot of energy re-deciding, periodically, if you are in or out. Deciding takes a lot of energy away from other things like building a better life together.

2. You don’t burn a lot of energy re-wondering, periodically, if your partner is in or out. The whole reason (I believe) that commitment is so important in lasting love in the first place is because it settles anxieties about whether or not there is a future together.

3. Having a strong sense of “us with a future” changes behavior in positive ways. Research demonstrates this in countless studies. People invest when there is a future. People sacrifice when there is a future. People don’t get as upset about small (and sometimes large) problems in the present when there is a sense that “we are here for each other despite our imperfections and annoying habits.” While a settled sense of a future together doesn’t (and shouldn’t) make abuse or infidelity tolerable, it otherwise does wonders for making it okay for you each to be human.

Having said those things, I can imagine one way in which this type of policy could lower the odds of divorce for some people.

Imagine a couple we’ll call Lucy and Ricky. They are planning their wedding. Their wedding is a week or two away and it’s time to go down to the town hall and get their wedding license. They get to the desk and talk to the clerk and ask for a license. The clerk says, “no problem. Just fill out this form and give me a check for the fee.” The clerk points to a section in the middle of the form and says, “Also, you have to check one of these boxes, here, to indicate if you want the renewable-term marriage or not, and if you do, what term you are choosing.”

Lucy starts to fill out the card, and she gets to the term election section. She starts to mark the “non-renewing” box (which, ironically, means perpetually renewing), and Ricky says, “hold on a second. Let’s talk about if we should go for a 5 year or 2 year term. That’s an interesting idea and there must be some advantages.”

Ricky and Lucy are now going to have a special moment. Let’s call it a somewhat late stage DTR. (Define the relationship.) As you might imagine, in their case, it becomes their last serious conversation about a future together.

Here’s my point for today. Temporary commitment is not compatible with a relationship that most people choose in the belief and hope of permanence. If the commitment is temporary, it just is, but we shouldn’t expect the benefits that come with the expectation of permanence to follow from a temporary permit.


I will stay with this theme in the next post or two because there are some more angles to explore that are interesting (or fun) or both. Can you commit to reading just one more blog entry? Two? I’m not asking for a lifetime commitment here.

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Government Funding and Questions of Impact with Relationship Education

This is another one of those posts that leans on the heavier side related to policies. Some of you brave souls stuck it out through my posts on selection and science and free will (scroll down to the entry "Did you Decide to Read This" and work your way up if you are interested). In that chain, I got involved in some of the dust up on sociologist Philip Cohen's site about marriage and cohabitation. We're onto another topic now.

Philip Cohen recently wrote about the expenditure of federal and state funds on programs to strengthen relationships between unmarried parents, marriages, and fatherhood. He raised strong concerns about what that money was buying us as a culture. These are reasonable questions. At any rate, I could not help but weigh in. So, if you are interested, see his entry here. The link seems to take you to the bottom of the page, where my long comment was on the day I made this entry. Scroll up to see his comments that led to mine. Important stuff to read and consider if it's an area you are interested in it.

Next up, lighter side again. Something interesting about marriage licenses.

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A Fascinating Site I Just Came Across

Hello folks. It’s been awhile for a new post because I’ve been attending again to family business (moving my mom to Denver from Florida).

I hope to have a new post up within the next week or so. However, I do have something of substance to share. I just found this great blog by a group of social psychologists. Their blog is at a site called “Science of Relationships.” The blog is excellent. Most of their entries are similar to some of the edgier ones of mine. The write concisely and very well about various emerging findings, and they cover a lot of interesting ground. The site is also exceptionally well organized by categories, if you like to browse. They cover the findings of many interesting studies.

For those of you who follow my work and are more on the conservative side, just note that they are not, so you’ll get a different cultural flavor on some things there than you might get from me. Anyway, their work is fun and provocative and I recommend the site to you. You would not lack for great discussion starters with students or other groups by looking through their site.

More from me soon.

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What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas, Right? Thoughts on Life Before Marriage

More people are getting married later and later. Last I read, the average age at marriage for men in the US was 28 and for women it was 27. (Clearly, women in their 20s dig older men.) There is an obvious and interesting implication of this that I first a sociologist talk about around 12 years ago. He noted that there exists this increasingly long period of time in human development between when people are sexually maturing (I only mean capable of having sex and making babies) and when people are settling down into marriage. It’s really pretty amazing to think about this. It has huge implications, since the average person is not settling into marriage until 15 years after when they become interested in, and capable of, having sex.

15 years. Hm. What can happen in 15 years? Unless you’ve been living on another planet, you are aware that the answer is really, “quite a lot.” I’m going to ignore a number of interesting and related issues that I will discuss in coming blog entries (things like age at marriage and how young is too young, and the complications in life from having children from different partners).

What I want to focus on here is Vegas. Does what happens in Vegas stay in Vegas? As a side point, it’s an interesting marketing campaign they have going, especially in contrast to their prior years where their marketing was oriented toward getting people to think Vegas was a fabulous place to take the family. Call me suspicious, but I suspect the different ad campaigns were written by different people.

I’m not actually much interested in Vegas but I am interested in the Vegas mindset. The core idea, of course, is that what happens in Vegas does not touch the rest of your life. It’s a no-harm, no-foul, place with a firewall around it. You can do whatever you like in Vegas and it won’t affect the rest of your life. I have a theory about this. It has two parts.

Part 1. What happens romantically between the ages of 18 and 34 (or whenever a person settles down in marriage and family life) affects the rest of life.

Part 2. People are now more likely to believe than in the past that what happens before they settle down will not affect their prospects for life-long love and happiness.

Part 1 is really pretty easy to document. Part 2, then, is the hypothesis that matters here.

Being a geek who like’s gadgets, I decided one day to draw some figures on my iPhone that depicted this theory. In the first figure, what you see is a green line, increasing over time. Let’s say that depicts idyllic growth when it comes to romantic relationships and marriage. Things are smooth and growing toward the future.

Next, let’s make that green line kind of wiggly, because almost no one’s life is as smooth as depicted in that first picture.

Now, contrast that drawing with the next, that has a red line with serious ups and downs in romantic life.

I can be a more specific about the jagged red line. It represents taking the path in life where any or all of the following happen:

- Having children before marriage
- Having children before marriage with more than one partner
- Cohabiting with more than one person prior to marriage
- Having a number of sexual partners (for some, a lot of sexual partners)
- Cohabiting with a partner before marriage, especially before having mutual plans for marriage

Scientifically, all of these things are associated with greater risks. Of course, there are some people who experience all of these things and life turns out fine, anyway. And there are others who avoid all of these things and struggle a lot once they marriage. Nothing is destiny here, but these things are reliably associated with greater risks for struggles in marriage and/or divorce.

Now, take a look again at the last drawing above. You may not have noticed it, but it expresses my theory about what I think many people believe. Note that it suggests that one can go through their 20s and follow that red line up and down, and when ready to settle down, be right back on the green line as if nothing happened in between. That’s Vegas. It’s a visual depiction of the belief that “whatever I do in my love life before I settle down has no bearing on the rest of my life.”

I think something like the next drawing is closer to the truth for too many people. It shows one’s future options being affected. It suggests that what happens in the Vegas of romantic lives in earlier adulthood doesn't stay in Vegas for some people. In fact, for some, what happens in Vegas might not even stay in Nevada.

There is a parallel to this way of thinking in the computing world. Geeks know that you can create what are called virtual machines within a computer that can be used to surf the web or do whatever, and whatEVER happens in that virtual computer will affect nothing else about the real computer. No virus or Trojan-horse program or anything else can touch what matters. It’s walled off. In fact, some refer to this as a sandbox, conveying the idea that there is a container for playing within that you can simply leave when done. Not even a grain of sand will stick to your foot.

In thinking about this, I’m suggesting something pretty simple and not very radical. More people should think about what is going on in their love lives, go more slowly, and make the best decisions they can, rather than letting things slide in ways that put their futures at risk.

Vegas wants you to think you can do whatever you want and leave with all your options intact—all your options except for having as much spending money or savings as you had before you got there. Obviously, they want you to leave with a lighter wallet. But is real life like Vegas? Is there a magical place in a person’s love life where nothing they do matters to their future prospects? That’s what Vegas is selling: The illusion of a place without risk or consequence to the rest of your life. How about you? Do you think that life works that way?

Here’s one recent editorial making the case that life may not be like Vegas, after all. Click here.


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Marriage and Cohabitation: Another Take, Building on the Discussion of Selection

[This was written years ago. Since this one is pretty popular, I have updated links now with various studies as of 2-2015. Also, if you are interested in the subject of cohabitation and want a narrative summary of our line of research, complete with abstracts and citations and how we were thinking in the progression of studies, you can get a document on that, here.]

This post is about cohabitation and marriage and commitment. It is also the last of five posts on key scientific issues that affect all of science, social science, and have been huge issues in discussions and debates about cohabitation. I plan for this one to be the last major, heavy science piece on those themes for awhile. For full context, see preceding posts.

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Backdrop for the Blog Entry Below

The Institute for American Values and the National Marriage Project just released the third edition of a report entitled Why Marriage Matters. It is a document authored by sociologist Brad Wilcox, who heads up the National Marriage Project, and co-signed by a group of family scholars, including myself. You can find out more about the report, order a copy, or download the press release, executive summary, endnotes (all the references cited) by clicking on the title above.

The report created quite a stir, and reignited the continual debate among scholars about the importance of marriage and the implications of cohabitation. One particularly strong example of the debate on such matters comes from the blog of sociologist Philip Cohen. You can see Cohen’s comments on the issues as well as comments from various people in reply, including Brad Wilcox and other family scholars, on his site by clicking here. There are follow-ups in the next blog entry of Cohen, as well.

In thinking about the various issues raised in the Why Marriage Matters report as well as on Cohen’s blog and elsewhere, I wrote the following thoughts. So, here you go. Plenty to chew on and think about.

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My Thoughts

Every responsible scientist in the family field understands that there are potent selection factors involved in romantic trajectories and family outcomes. Further, the income/education/poverty aspects of selection are particularly compelling and raise concerns about how individuals’ aspirations can get hammered by environments. In comparison to sociology, though, psychologists like me have an orientation toward intervention at the individual level while accepting selection. To many of us, evidence for selection is knowledge that can be used to identify people at greatest risk who may need help more than others. For example, there must be a large amount of selection involved in having low birth weight babies. Such knowledge can be used to guide policy at the macro level while also informing what to try to change at the micro, individual level. One of the concerns that I (and colleagues like Galena Rhoades) have is that selection is too often taken to imply that only the macro, societal level of risk matters. I think there is a bias in sociology in this direction because the scientists are primed to think about macro effects.

In terms of cohabitation and selection, my colleagues (Galena Rhoades & Howard Markman) and I find that you can robustly control for selection and still demonstrate risks associated with cohabiting prior to engagement (the risk of cohabiting prior to marriage appears to be clearly moderated by this). That’s not to say that we’re done studying this. We would particularly like to get longer-term marital and cohabiting outcomes in a large, national longitudinal sample we have wherein we measure a massive number of potential selection variables along with relationship status changes, relationship quality, and information about how transitions occur. Regarding the latter, we originally began to test for the presence or absence of mutual plans for marriage at the time cohabiting begins based on a theory we have that cohabitation has more inertia for continuance than dating without cohabiting. In other words, what people often miss in thinking about cohabitation is that it makes it harder to break up (once you share a single address). Yes, people are quite likely to break-up in cohabitation, but that’s in comparison to marriage. The comparison to dating is more apt for understanding some of the issues involved. [Update 2-2015: Website for official journal article is here. PDF of manuscript in form I can post it is here.]

For many, moving in together allows constraints to build prior to the development of mutual, or at least clear, dedication between the partners. We have shown in a number of studies that constraints build up steadily in cohabitation and that constraints predict relationship stability net of dedication. In the latest analyses, we examine changes resulting from the transition to cohabitation using within-subjects analyses (providing a strong control for selection). Among a myriad of findings, the analyses show that constraints take a marked jump up in level at cohabitation and then start to grow at a faster pace during cohabitation. (Update 2-2015: This paper is published.)

This brings me to one key point I’d raise related to the flurry of postings on Philip Cohen's site. Cohabitation often occurs well before marital intentions are mutually clear and public. This means that, for many couples, various forces to remain together (constraints) increase earlier in the mate selection or pair-bonding process than before, at least in modern history. Further, the type of cohabitation we believe is most associated with risk from inertia is now the most common [Link added, 2-2015] (cohabitation prior to mutual plans to marry). (For those who would want to take marriage and/or engagement out of the picture in thinking about risk, simply insert the idea that the commitment to the future—its mutuality and symmetry—is important prior to going through a transition that is potentially constraining. Like transitions into cohabitation or having a child.)

There is a lot of selection involved in who cohabits prior to having clear, mutual plans for marriage. However, on top of those selection characteristics, cohabitation adds to the picture by making some of these already riskier relationships harder to leave. This does not prevent a child from being born to two cohabiting parents. With more children being born and raised in cohabitation, children increasingly are in homes with parents who are in higher risk relationships that have, on average, lower levels of dedication and other characteristics of higher risk. There are, of course, marriages with the same characteristics and there are many cohabiting unions without these characteristics. However, on balance, we believe cohabitation plays a causal role in risk on top of selection because of the increased constraints inherent in it. (And for some people, cohabitation likely lowers their risks, though this is more challenging to demonstrate.)

This model of cohabitation risk based on inertia fully embraces selection. In this way of thinking, cohabitation may not causes poorer parenting but it may well increase the number of couples who have or bear children who are not well matched and who will have difficulty parenting together. Hence, one can predict that a net societal increase in cohabitation that begins before partners have a clear and mutual commitment will lead to a greater number of children living in difficult contexts.

Serial cohabitation is illustrative of some points about selection at one level and individual choice at another level. Serial cohabitation is associated with later difficulties in marriage and/or family stability. Selection is involved (on average, it’s more likely for those growing up in a single parent home, those with economic disadvantage, etc.). A person who has those and other background factors is definitely at higher risk no matter if they cohabit with a number of people or not. Yet, does it seem far-fetched to suggest also that a person with such background risks can improve their odds if they raise the bar on conditions under which they would begin to cohabit with someone (e.g., strong mutual commitment, engagement, or marriage)? In line with inertia, a person doing so would make it less likely she or he will get stuck, at least for a while, in a difficult spot. More importantly, if a single parent avoids extra cohabiting relationships, they also reduce the degree to which their children are exposed to significant attachments that end. Further, there is reason to believe that such a person could reduce the possibility of child maltreatment since the odds of that occurring are greater with live-in partners. Even with selection, a person making such adjustments in their personal life is changing here-and-now behavior that matters. Fortunately, this is one area where experiments may show if the chain of logic holds up. Such an experiment was designed by my colleague Galena Rhoades, but it is, as yet, unfunded.

That brings me to the matter of cultural and dyadic aspects of commitment. There are reasons why marriage, including the ceremony, actually should matter regarding outcomes. This can be debated endlessly, of course. A conceptual rationale may be the best we can do here, since this is not an area where any of us are going to get to do an experiment and randomly assign people to marriage and not marriage.

First, marriage signals a lot about commitment. While marriages are much weaker than they used to be, at least in terms of stability, part of what I believe is protective about marriage is that it conveys a less ambiguous signal about commitment than that conveyed by cohabitation. This matter of signals was becoming a big focus in Steve Nock’s work before he passed on, and, what I am pretty sure was his last published writing was focused on exactly this (see references link below). At the same time that Steve Nock was focusing more on signals, spurred on by the ideas of economist Robert Rowthorn, I had been focusing on what I saw as a decline, in general, of emblems of commitment in changing patterns of how people mate. Nock and I, along with numerous others, all thought these changes were consequential. Andrew Cherlin has suggested that marriage has become a status symbol, economically, denoting wealth. That seems true. But, more importantly, I think, marriage remains the strongest culturally imbued signal of commitment status even in weakened forms. [2-2015 update: For a piece dealing with the issue of the timing and sequencing of signals, I lay this out clearly, here.]

In our work, we have found that when cohabiting is not preceded by mutual clarity about a commitment to the future (e.g., by engagement or marriage), there is not only evidence of lower relationship quality, there is a greater likelihood of asymmetry in dedication levels between partners. I see this as part of a scientific explanation for why books like “He’s Just Not That Into You” are bestsellers. One of protective things about publicly understood (and institutionalized) signals like engagement and marriage is that they require both partners to declare their commitment levels—and I particularly mean commitment as dedication, here. [Update 2-2015: For more on this theme, see our article here.] Without cultural forms that push this information out in the open, it is easier to have relationships where one partner does not fully realize that the other is substantially less committed. The emergence of new cultural forms like FaceBook’s relationship status indicator may start to fill a gap by providing a commitment clarifying tool for some couples.

I do, by the way, believe that cohabitation can signal higher levels of commitment (compared to not cohabiting) among some who are very poor. I think it likely that the potency of a signal is partially related to what other signals are available. For many complex reasons, marriage is so far off the radar screen in terms of experience for many in poverty that another signal like cohabitation can take on signal value. But, more generally, it seems that cohabitation conveys very little information about the level of commitment in romantic relationships. That’s why, for example, we find that infidelity is no less likely in cohabiting relationships than in dating relationships. This is not to say that cohabiting partners cannot have high levels of dedication to one another. Many do. Further, while marriage requires public clarity about commitment and cohabitation does not, a cohabiting couple can talk about their relationship and clarify commitment between them and to others. But most do not do these things, and, in fact, most cohabiting couples slide into cohabiting without discussing what it means (for more on this, see the note in the references link below). This is part and parcel with Steve Nock’s observation that cohabitation is not an institution with specific, common meanings.

Second, let’s think about the matter of ceremony as raised by Brad Wilcox. I am not a social psychologist, but it is easy to call upon that field’s robust literature of experimental studies that test the likelihood of people following through on commitments made under varying conditions. The cognitive dissonance literature is replete with evidence that the strongest action tendencies are set up by the awareness that one is making a clear choice among two or more alternatives. Further, based on the power of a desire for cognitive consistency, the more publicly one has declared their decision, the stronger the set up for following through. These are powerful human tendencies demonstrated in scores of studies. What aspects of cohabitation (when not accompanied by commitment to marriage) perform these functions? Marriage is a cultural phenomenon that, whatever else may be true, has historically required the very kinds of behaviors that a lot of science suggests will affect persistence to follow through.

To sum up, I believe that scholars can accept and respect the evidence for selection while also maintaining that there are strong, protective aspects to marriage.


References Centrally Related to this Post (click here)

For something more lighthearted, but meaningful, about personal decisions in one's romantic life, see my older post on black jack and roulette (click here).

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Do Actors Act? Further Thoughts on Science, Selection, and Free Will

[NOTE: This is the fourth in a series on science, free-will, and selection. So if you’ve not read the last three entries, I recommend you do because they build up to this one. It’s a lot to read, I know, and this is the longest entry I am writing on this subject, but it’s all got to be said in one chunk.]

I last suggested that one might be able to show that teens can get sexually transmitted diseases without ever touching other humans. I do not mean that one can get a STD without some type of sexual contact. I mean that a social scientist might be able to get close to presenting a convincing case for something that is not possible. And, to be sure, I am exaggerating. But I exaggerate with a purpose, and it is not to be flip.

Recall what a social scientist means by a selection effect. There is a great deal of evidence of selection in numerous kinds of risk that people have in life, including in their love lives. Some of the most important selection effects are related to family history, poverty, and education. For example, people who cohabit with a number of different people before marriage are likely to have more trouble in marriage than those who do not, and they are also more likely to have selection factors like those I just listed. The interesting question is whether or not cohabiting with a number of people actually makes it more likely people will struggle in their marriages or if the other background risks simply lead to both the serial cohabitation and problems succeeding in marriage. Or both. You would not do too poorly in life to usually bet on “both” when dealing with questions like this.

My colleague Galena Rhoades and I talk about this a great deal because it affects what social scientists covey to others about what can and cannot change in their lives. I’ll get to that later after we have some fun with imaginary data.

AN EXAMPLE

Okay, now to sex. I know you have been waiting patiently. Assume you are a researcher studying sexually transmitted diseases in older teenagers. In fact, you have the most amazing data set in the history of your field. You have a sample where you know a stunning number of things. On the 25,000 people in your sample, you have measured these variables and more: family history, parental relationship quality, parental divorce (or, if parents ever married), the number of romantic relationship transitions each parent has had (and at what ages for the individuals in the sample), levels of parental supervision, personal insecurities, personality tendencies to seek stimulation and impulsivity, drug use history, alcohol use, school performance, the number of sexually active kids in each individuals’ school and neighborhood, physical health, everything else about the neighborhood including crime, stress, social integration/disintegration, resources, sex-and-stress-hormones like daily (I mean to be extreme here) blood levels of androgens and estrogen, oxytocin levels and reactivity to it, vasopressin levels, parents income, current household income, parents’ education levels, religious beliefs, religiousness, beliefs about sex, type and number of friends, specific genetic markers associated with sexual behavior and pair bonding (are you getting tired of this list yet?) . . . Okay, I’ll stop. But, please assume I could have gone on for a while because I could have.

By the way, you have a huge budget.  Huge.  And a massive sample size.  Massive. You have followed this sample from age 12 to 20. You and your assistants check in with each of the individuals, relentlessly, and you also have access to all kinds of records. And, you’ve not lost contact with too many people. It’s a dream data set (and it would be very expensive). You also know who has had sex, when, with whom, what type of sex, and under what circumstances. (Those GPS circuits in cell phones are really rather amazing.) You also know who has had, or continues to have, an STD. Let’s also assume that the data are really good with low measurement error; however, you also must assume that sexual behavior is pretty sensitive stuff to most people, and it’s a little fuzzier than most of the other measurements you have as to error. But still, you have very good information on sexual behavior.

It’s statistical time. Your first question is about selection. How much of the STD risk do all these variables, except for sexual behavior, explain? You crunch the data and find that you can explain 75% of the differences between individuals who get and do not get STDs. Pretty amazing (though, realize it’s harder to explain as much as a prediction, using the same variables, in a new data set—technical point you can ignore if you like). Now, you do another, similar analysis but you add the sexual behavior variables into the stew. Suppose the amount of variance explained goes up 80%. Wow. That’s a lot of explanation. You are happy because you will get this published and it’s actually kind of useful information.

Please keep in mind I’m making up an example, here. These are not real findings.

Why doesn’t the amount of variance explained shoot up a lot higher when you throw in the sexual behavior variables? In this case, it only goes up a bit higher because the selection variables explain so much, there is not a lot else to explain. Your big bunch of selection variables was so good at “predicting” who would get an STD that you hardly need to know whether or not, and when and how, people had sex. In fact, that whole having sex thing looks pretty inconsequential based on the analyses.This is an extreme example but the point I am making is that when it comes to come common behaviors and risks, there truly are a lot of background variables and factors that seem to determine the outcome. 

Quiz. Does the fact that you have just shown that selection explains a ton about who gets STDs mean that teens can get STDs without ever having sexual contact? Of course not. While we are here, I want to make a couple of complicated points. If you want to skip ahead, just move on to “three points to ponder” below.

COMPLEX BITS

First, as a risk behavior becomes something more and more people do, it, ironically, becomes harder to detect it as mattering in risk outcomes. Extreme examples are extremely useful. If 93% of people do some behavior that is risky, the fact that you have almost no one to compare the 93% to makes it pretty hard to show that the behavior matters. Plus, the 7% will be quite unusual, making what you can conclude from the comparison of limited value. Let that sink in a bit.

Second, I’m using terms here like “risk behavior” a lot here, but doing so is complicated because one of the core issues in this discussion is whether or not a behavior associated with risk is truly risky behavior. In the case of a hookup with a stranger at a party, it’s pretty obvious that the behavior is risky, no matter what else is true. That’s the point of my STD example above. But here is a different example. Serial cohabitation is associated with later difficulties in marriage and/or family stability, and, of course, there is some selection involved (on average, it’s more likely for those growing up in a single parent home, those with economic disadvantage, etc.). A person who has those and other background factors is definitely at higher risk no matter if they cohabit with a number of people or not. Yet, isn’t it pretty obvious that a person with such background factors improves their odds if they do not cohabit before marriage or they cohabit only with one person, and only after having mutual plans to marry or some other really clear clarification about commitment?

I say this because by not having those extra cohabiting relationships, the person makes it less likely they will get stuck, at least for a while, in a difficult spot. That’s because constraints to remain together are greater when cohabiting, and that makes it harder to leave. If a single parent avoids extra cohabiting relationships, they also reduce the degree to which their children are exposed to significant attachments that end. Further, there is reason to believe that such a person could reduce the possibility of child maltreatment since the odds of that occurring are greater with live-in partners. Even with selection, a person making such adjustments in their life is changing here-and-now behavior that matters.

THREE POINTS TO PONDER: CAN ACTORS ACT?

Back to you and your amazing, fantasy data set and astounding evidence for selection. (Yes, researchers have fantasies about data sets. There, I’ve let the secret out. You might think you’ve heard about all the temptations on the web, but do you know there are some data sets out there on the web that anyone can access? I know, I should not tempt you.) So, now you have your findings and you present them to the world. You can very easily sound like you are saying that the actual sexual behavior of the teens didn’t matter much in producing risk. You’d be right in a way and way, way off in another way.

First, selection matters and it is everywhere. In fact, it’s closely related to what social psychologists call the fundamental attribution error. It has been repeatedly proven that we (all of us, really) tend to over attribute the causes of other peoples’ behavior to themselves and give far too little weight to their circumstances. (We happen to generously give ourselves credit for how circumstances affected what we did when we have done something wrong or poorly. Neat trick, that.) That’s why popular sayings like “walk a mile in their shoes” have real scientific oomph behind them. Environments matter, as does selection.

Second, social scientists have a difficult time figuring out how much of a risk effect to ascribe to selection and how much to experience. We can get close, but it’s hard to ever totally answer this question. One of the common ways to figure out if experience (versus selection) actually matters is to assess a massive amount of potential selection variables and see if experience still explains anything. This is an imperfect but credible and important approach to teasing selection and experience apart. This is one of the things we do in our research on cohabitation, particularly in one large sample we are following over time. We measure an amazing number of possible selection variables to “see” how much experience matters. There are other strategies one can pursue, as well.

Third, and a SUPER BIG SOCIAL SCIENCE DILEMMA: It’s not all that clear how researchers can actually measure whether or not people have the option to engage in, or not to engage in, a behavior associated with higher risk. You can measure if risky behavior happened. You can measure what background characteristics make it more likely that behavior will happen. But, you cannot easily measure if someone had a choice.There are some ways to get close to measuring choice, but they involve very creative experiments, and these are not the kind of data most debates about selection and experience revolve around. So, while it’s hard to demonstrate that people actually make choices, and, thereby, show they have choices to make, it’s pretty easy to get evidence for selection. But how do you even keep evidence of free-will and choice in your statistical model? This means social scientists can often sound like the individual's ability to decide or choose is not part of what matters. This is a profoundly important question (unless I’m missing something really obvious to another who will eventually point it out to me.  That happens plenty often and I’m fine with it!).

An emphasis on selection can be motivated by good science and it can also be motivated by compassion and social justice concerns. This is because, in most things where it comes up, selection implies that individuals have disadvantages that contribute to how things turned out. But here’s the downside of so strongly emphasizing selection, as is truly, commonly done is social science. The misleading message carried in the DNA of selection is that you—the individual—can’t really do anything to control your odds of success in life. It’s out of your hands. And this is the greatest concern Galena Rhoades and I have identified in thinking deeply about this issue: while it’s important to take into account the hand someone has been dealt in life, it’s also important to look for ways to help that person play the hand they have as well as they can.It is important not to convey that they are helpless victims and cannot do anything that affects their own outcomes.

Very strong selection-based story lines tilt the whole board toward implying our behavior is determined somewhere other than in our decider circuits. Is that what most social scientists really have in mind when they emphasizing selection? I doubt it, but that is the implication of the message.

Sure, some people have selection factors that make it harder to choose, or even have access to, a lower risk pathway in life. But do we want to accept the idea that our here-and-now behaviors, in some of the most important areas of life, are out of our control? I choose not to believe this.


For the practical implications of how what someone believes in such matters can affect his or her love-life, see my post on gambling from last year. When you are up for reading more, that is.

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Black Jack Or Roulette? You Choose

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