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Think arranged marriages are loveless? Not so, says psychologist Robert Epstein, a contributing editor for Scientific American MIND magazine. He spoke March 10 at the 92nd Street Y’s Tribeca site in New York City:
“And there’s even a study published in India [Usha Gupta and Pushpa Singh of the University of Rajasthan, 1982] but using an American love scale, called the Rubin Love Scale, that compared love in love marriages in India, because they have those, too, to love in arranged marriages. And in this particular study, love in the love marriages starts out very high. And then over time it decreases. That’s what all of our studies show. And in the arranged marriages—and this is true in my work, too—we see the love starting out relatively low. Because in some cases the people barely know each other, sometimes they’ve had a half an hour of contact in total before they got married. And then it increases gradually, surpasses the love in the love marriages at about five years. And 10 years out it’s twice as strong.”
—Steve Mirsky
[The above text is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
Robert Epstein’s article “Fall In Love And Stay That Way” appeared in the January/February 2010 issue of Scientific American MIND and can be previewed at http://bit.ly/d1OQ8Q
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12 Comments
Add CommentAny marriage is a crapshoot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes this study control for the social conventions that make divorce culturally impossible even if legally permissible?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf Stockholm syndrome can manifest in just a few days, then feeling of love can probably be cultivated between strangers in a few years of being permanently leg-shackled.
I'm not saying arrange marriages are abusive or unhappy. I bet they are more happy, just as conservatives with rigid morals and respect for authority are generally more happy than liberals. As a recent book argues, too many choices in blue jeans and cereals makes people unhappy, then too many options in mates probably produces the same anxiety.
But then, I would rather have post-mo alienation/anxiety than fewer choices, particularly if I were, say, gay or victim of domestic abuse or in love with someone from the wrong race/caste/religion.
Does this study control for the social conventions that make divorce culturally impossible even if legally permissible?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf Stockholm syndrome can manifest in just a few days, then feeling of love can probably be cultivated between strangers in a few years of being permanently leg-shackled.
I'm not saying arrange marriages are abusive or unhappy. I bet they are more happy, just as conservatives with rigid morals and respect for authority are generally more happy than liberals. As a recent book argues, too many choices in blue jeans and cereals makes people unhappy, then too many options in mates probably produces the same anxiety.
But then, I would rather have post-mo alienation/anxiety than fewer choices, particularly if I were, say, gay or victim of domestic abuse or in love with someone from the wrong race/caste/religion.
Yawn. Forced marriages are unethical and it doesn't matter how hard you try to make the Muslims' arranged marriages look good, they're still wrong to the core.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, the royal families back in the day did quite a bit of 'arranged marriages'; so it's not a muslim invention and btw India is mostly hindu, they do it too. You got islamophobia on da brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe aristocracy had plenty of experience in pretext and subterfuge as well. Consider the story of Jack Cade: He brokered a deal with the authorities to stop the Kent Rebellion and Sheriff Iden shot him.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt doesn't matter in what country unethical things happen. Just that they do, and that people named "rockjohny"try to create straw men to downplay those wrongs.
This is talking about marriages arranged by family, grizzlybowman, not forced marriages.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou assume there is no social expectation or law binding women to marry the men selected through the arranged marriage. Read "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali to learn more about the backlash from refusing an arranged marriage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe concept of arranged marriages as practised in India have been most misunderstood. To understand the concept we must know the theory of love. Love is attributable to four factors only. This applies to all types of love. The first of these is habit. We love everything that we are habituated with. Mothers cooking is the best because we are habituated from child hood. The second is superimposition. We impose some values to something and accept our imposed value as of greate importance. We find a girl with some features that matches our imagination and ignoring all other values think that she is the center of our universe. In reality she may have features we detest the most. But at that moment all negative features are supressed by our superimposition of the positive features. The third factor for is re-discovery. We might have had some positive interaction with someone and got separated or forgotton all about it. If by chance we come across it again, we recall our sweet memory and get attracted towards it immediately. Meeting a child hood friend after a long gap is one example. The last of the factors which is most common, is the sensory perception. Based on the age factor, our perception of the same object changes. During adolescence, our hormonal development are the maximum but experience of the world are minimum. Thus, while each experience appears to be a new experience, the quick changes in our body often jumbles up the senses further confusing us. Thus the previous three factors come into play in a jumbled manner and we "fall in love" blindly. Because of the above reason, a boy or a girl is not in a proper mental state to evaluate the characteristics of the prospective partner objectively. They act "blind" to some aspects. In case these come back after the initial euphoria settles down, they find someone else in place of their loved one. This starts repulson, which leads to divorce. In Indian marriages, the parents, who are not subject to such imotional distortion, apply seven yard-sticks for partner selection for their children to narrow down the differences. These are: socio-cultural compatibility (kula), integrity, guardianship (sheela), education (sanaathataa), education (vidya), profession (vritti), physique (vapu), age (vaya). If these match, then the candidates are short-listed and the boy and the girl are allowed to give final approval from among those. Then the children are told to fully accept the other. Thus, they first adjust their differences. Thereafter the love grows automatically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi think arranged marriages i more of a forced love then a picked love. i don't really care what some study says about love. i believe no one can choose for you your true loved one. love is love.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisForced marriage is not true love... You could give me 100 studies about love and I would tell you the same thing. You can only find your true love.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi'm not really sure if love marriage works better than arrange marriages . my parents had arrange marriage and it seems like it is the best choice but i also think love marriage is not a bad idea either as long as both partners are there for eachother and love one another. thats wat really matters!
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