DOES marital bliss depend on an active sex life? It sounds like a
bears-in-woods and papal-religious-affiliation sort of question, yet
around half of studies carried out into the matter suggest the
answer is “no”. And this is not just a question of Darbies and
Joans, who were at it in their youths, having slowed down as the
years have passed. Even reasonably newly married couples, these
studies suggest, do not rely on sex to keep their bond strong.
On the other hand, the remaining 50% of investigations have
shown the correlation that common sense would predict—namely
that in matters matrimonial, sex is crucial. Lindsey Hicks of
Florida State University therefore wondered if, as is the case with
many things in life, it is all a question of how you ask the
question. Many psychological questionnaires permit the
respondent time for reflection. Ms Hicks was having none of that.
She wanted instant, gut responses.
Ms Hicks’s study, just published in Psychological Science , started
off by doing what previous ones have done. She collaborated with
a team of colleagues to round up 120 recently married local
couples. The partners in these couples were then separated and
each asked to fill in a questionnaire that inquired about how
satisfied they were with their spouses and how often they had sex
(a fact on which, despite what cynics might suspect, husband and
wife generally agreed).
Ms Hicks, however, did not leave things there. She suspected the
reason why past explorations of this subject have had mixed
results is because many people want to believe their marriage is
in a good state despite infrequent sex, or that frequent sex should
not be important for maintaining a healthy relationship. Wanting
to believe something is not, though, the same as actually
believing it. So she needed a way to distinguish between the two.
Her answer was what is known as an automatic attitude test.
Such tests measure instant feelings. Participants are shown an
image and then presented with a word that is either positive
(“wonderful”, “outstanding” or “charming”, for example) or
negative (“awful”, “disturbing”, “horrible”). When they see this
word they must indicate as quickly as they can, using a keyboard
that measures their reaction time, whether it is positive or
negative. Previous work has shown that faster reaction times to
positive words and slower reaction times to negative ones
suggest a participant has a positive attitude towards whatever he
saw in the image. Slower reaction times to positive words and
faster ones to negative words suggest the opposite.
To wield the test for her own purposes, Ms Hicks arranged for
participants to work through several sets of words. The first set
was a control, in which they ranked the words without seeing an
image beforehand. The following sets were preceded either by
another control (a picture of the participant him- or herself) or by a
picture of the participant’s spouse.
Ms Hicks and her colleagues found that although the frequency
with which couples have sex does not have much correlation with
how satisfied they claim to be with their partner, it correlates well
with their automatic attitudes towards one another. Those who
said they had sex with their spouse two or more times a week
reacted more quickly to positive words and more slowly to
negative ones after seeing an image of said spouse. The opposite
was true for those who had sex once a week or less. None of
these effects emerged after people saw an image of themselves,
or during the initial control.
Ms Hicks’s result does not mean the no-sex brigade are lying
when they claim it does not signify. They may genuinely believe
what they say. But it does suggest they are fooling themselves.
And that is not a matter of mere prurience. If things do start to go
wrong in a relationship, and the participants want to patch
matters up, then understanding where the real problem lies is
important. This is only a single study, of course. But if it is
successfully replicated, marriage-guidance counsellors the world
over might want to take note.




Cc: lalasticlala mynd44

www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21698232-just-how-important-sex-marriages-success-count-me?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/Countmein