Research suggests that having a happy spouse leads to a longer marriage, and now study results show that it’s associated with a longer life, too.
Research suggests that having a happy spouse leads to a longer marriage, and now study results show that it’s associated with a longer life, too. The study was published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
“The data show that spousal life satisfaction was associated with mortality, regardless of individuals’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, or their physical health status,” says study author Olga Stavrova, a researcher at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.
Notably, spouses’ life satisfaction was an even better predictor of participants’ mortality than participants’ own life satisfaction. Participants who had a happy partner at the beginning of the study were less likely to pass away over the next 8 years compared with participants who had less happy partners.
“The findings underscore the role of individuals’ immediate social environment in their health outcomes. Most importantly, it has the potential to extend our understanding of what makes up individuals’ ‘social environment’ by including the personality and well-being of individuals’ close ones,” says Stavrova.
Read more at Association for Psychological Science
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