A new psychological study suggests men with an "attractive" wife are more likely to have a "satisfying" marriage, according to the Huffington Post.
The findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. More than 450 newlywed couples were followed for the first four years of their marriage to see if having a "good-looking" spouse had an affect on their marriage.
What the researchers found attractiveness plays a role in martial satisfaction, but only for men.
"The significant effect of wives' attractiveness on husbands' satisfaction was significantly stronger than the nonsignificant effect of husbands' attractiveness on wives' satisfaction, indicating that partner physical attractiveness played a larger role in predicting husbands' marital satisfaction than it did in predicting wives' marital satisfaction," the authors wrote in the study.
Read the full Huffington Post story here.
However, another study published in October claims genetics are the real reason why some marriages bring forth more satisfaction that others, according to a news release.
Researchers at UC Berkeley and Northwestern University have found there is a "wedded bliss" gene that is responsible for regulating serotonin. This gene may be able to "predict" how your emotions will affect human relationships. The findings were published in the journal Emotion:
Researchers found a link between relationship fulfillment and a gene variant, or "allele," known as 5-HTTLPR. All humans inherit a copy of this gene variant from each parent. Study participants with two short 5-HTTLPR alleles were found to be most unhappy in their marriages when there was a lot of negative emotion, such as anger and contempt, and most happy when there was positive emotion, such as humor and affection. By contrast, those with one or two long alleles were far less bothered by the emotional tenor of their marriages.
"An enduring mystery is, what makes one spouse so attuned to the emotional climate in a marriage, and another so oblivious?" UC Berkeley psychologist Robert W. Levenson, senior author of the study, said in a news release. "With these new genetic findings, we now understand much more about what determines just how important emotions are for different people."
Read more about the "marriage" gene study here.
