Divorce rate cut in half for couples who discussed relationship movies (2014)

The main outcome of the study was that couples that participated in ANY treatment had similar outcomes. The benefit was compared to a "No treatment" group.

But the article fails to mention that this "no treatment" group was not randomly selected!! The "no treatment" group was made up of couples that refused treatment, or failed to participate in treatments because of scheduling constraints.

So a less misleading headline might be: Couples that refuse relationship counselling have higher divorce rates. But that would surprise noone.

Unfortunately on closer examination the results look pretty meaningless to me. The study involves rather small numbers (e.g., 4/33 vs 10/44 divorces), but an even bigger issue is that the “control” arm in this study wasn’t selected randomly, but rather consisted of couples “declining active treatment” or who “could not be scheduled for active treatment.”

So a better summary might be “Divorce rate cut in half for coupling willing and able to take part in a relationship building program, of any sort.”

If these psychologists had only been a bit less greedy about wanting to compare three different treatment arms rather than a real control arm, they could have set up a study that could actually have taught us something...

https://www.rochester.edu/news/divorce-rate-cut-in-half-for-...

Edit: it's also in the right sidebar but I did not notice it until I had seen the PDF already (the graphics is the same as the frontpage of the PDF). Funny how being on the interwebz long enough trains one to ignore everything but the main content.

There is other research indicating that intellectual knowledge does not translate into behavior. But direct or imagined experience does.

So for example someone who can give all the right answers on a psychology test still acts the same under pressure. But people who have had to go through and reflect on simulated experiences will have that change actual behavior.

Therefore watching and discussing relationship movies is in line with what is known to actually change behavior.

The two books that made this point most effectively to me were Enlightenment Now and Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow. The first in the context of how much the rise of fiction changed the amount of empathy that people in general had. And the second explains it in terms of how intellectual knowledge only helps with the "thinking slow" parts of our brains, but you have to affect the "thinking fast" parts to change actual behavior.

Edit: after reading the questions about the movies that the couple were asked to answer, I doubt that my questions actually make that much sense.

This led me to wonder if there’s any relationship between the media and ability to elicit empathy - if couples discussed relationship books would they also see a lower rate of divorce? So far, I can only find one paper on this (https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.19003.tur) but I wonder how it fits into the wider literature?

What is known about the ability of different media to generate empathy? The paper above suggests books are better than films. What about immersive games?

For example, are there any reliable statistics on the percent of people who married in 1970, who did not divorce to the present day? And for 1980, 1990, 2000 etc.

Didn't take long for the equally cunning wife to successfully attempt to bribe the morally bankrupt psychiatrist.

Don’t get me wrong, it could certainly be true but I come in from a place of skepticism.

Talking about relationship movies gives a couple a platform to discuss issues that affect their current relationship, with much lower stakes than in the middle of a conflict. This doesn't have to effect change so much as it enables the partners to understand each other better, and accept the other more fully when conflicts arise. This can also enable the pair to adapt to each other better.

My girlfriend and I do this all the time, coincidentally, and i find it to be a great way to learn about her and to discuss how we might react in situations that would be difficult to resolve otherwise (like all the ones on the tele).

TLDR: It cuts the tension.

Participants per group - 43

Number divorced in control - 11

Number divorced in all three treatments - 5.

It sounds iffy but when I think about it, it probably will pass most statistical tests of significance. So this is surprising for sure.

I’ll never understand how divorce happens when two people have kids. Anything before that is just a dressed up break up.