Study: Delusion Secret to Happy Marriage

Monday, 07 March 2011 | by Pat's Picks

What’s the secret to a happy marriage? Delusion. According to the Boston Globe, new research says those who are “a bit delusional about their partners when they got married were more satisfied with their marriage three years later than those see-it-like-it-is realists.” Researchers asked 222 couples heading in to get their marriage licenses to fill out a survey about their partner. Then, they compared the results to a self-survey filled out by the partner. Those whose answers varied the most were also the most likely to report a happy marriage. The research team says their findings indicate maintaining “positive, even unrealistic, perceptions’’ of your partner could just be the way to get your marriage to last.

Click here for Scientific American‘s podcast about the study’s findings or read an abstract of the study, which was published in Psychological Science