One of the age-old questions concerning relationships has long been, “Is it better to be right or to be happy?”
If your partner says or does something you don’t agree with, should you just smile and go along in the interest of avoiding an argument and maintaining peace?
A new study performed at the University of Auckland in New Zealand sought to answer this question, and found that, according to their experiment, simply going along with the other person could have notably negative consequences.
Researchers studied a married New Zealand couple in their own home environment, and asked each partner to rate their quality of life on a scale of one to ten (with ten being the happiest) each day. During this experiment, the husband was asked to agree with everything his wife said, regardless of his opinion on the matter.
The husband was clued into the dynamics of this experiment. However, his wife was not told what was going on, and was not asked to alter her behavior. She was simply asked to rate her quality of life each day. At the start of the study, the husband rated his happiness a seven, and the wife rated hers an eight.
After six days, the wife’s happiness rating had crept up slightly to an 8.5. However, on the sixth day, she became aggravated with having to rate her quality of life, was described by researchers as “hostile,” and refused to participate in the experiment further.
By the twelfth day, the husband’s happiness rating had gone down to a three, and he was experiencing deep depression, and expressed that this was due to his wife becoming overly critical of him. At this point, the experiment was terminated.
Since the experiment, the couple has made amends. According to the researchers, the wife’s behavior during the experiment reinforced the fact that when humans gain too much power, they may, “assume the alpha position, as with chimpanzees, they become very aggressive and dangerous.”
The researchers added, “Many people in the world live as couples, and we believe that it could be harmful for one partner to always have to agree with the other. However, more research is needed to see whether our results hold if it is the male who is always right.”
When it comes to marital harmony, if both people are true to themselves and their opinions, but learn to express them to each other non-judgmentally and non-aggressively, and take the time to listen to the other person, results are likely to be much more positive than either partner struggling be right, or habitually conceding to the other.
-The Alternative Daily
