Partners Make People Feel Connected — Not Children, Pets Or Video Calls

Children, pets, video calls with friends and even working outside the house did nothing to increase people’s sense of social connection during the pandemic.

Children, pets, video calls with friends and even working outside the house did nothing to increase people’s sense of social connection during the pandemic.

People’s partners provide the best buffer against social disconnection due to the pandemic, new research finds.

Romantic partners help keep each other’s well-being from taking a knock from social isolation.

In contrast, chatting with friends on Facetime and any number of children and pets have little effect on making people feel socially connected.

In other words, it doesn’t matter how big your household is, it’s all down to the quality of the connection.

The research affirms the importance of romantic partners for mental well-being.

Ms Karynna Okabe-Miyamoto, the study’s first author, said:

“Research prior to the pandemic has long shown that partners are one of the strongest predictors of social connection and well-being.

And our research during the current COVID-19 pandemic has shown the same.

Living with a partner uniquely buffered declines in social connection during the early phases of the pandemic.”

For the study, almost 1,000 people in Canada and the UK answered questions about their feelings of social connectedness both before and during the pandemic.

They rated statements like:

  • “I felt close and connected with other people who are important to me.”
  • “People are around me, but not with me.”

People living with romantic partners gave higher ratings to their levels of social connection after social distancing measures took hold, the results showed.

However, children, pets, video calls with friends and even working outside the house did nothing to increase people’s sense of social connection.

The authors write:

“Living with a partner — but not how many people or who else one lives with — appeared to confer benefit during these uncertain and unprecedented times.”

How to deal with pandemic stress

The four most common strategies people are using to deal with the pandemic are:

  • checking in with loved ones,
  • increased exercise,
  • limiting news exposure,
  • and performing acts of kindness.

→ Read on: the best ways to deal with COVID stress and what social distancing does to brain and body.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Okabe-Miyamoto et al., 2021).

The Answer To Relationship Strain During The COVID Pandemic

Couples who interfere more with each other’s routines experience greater anger and sadness.

Couples who interfere more with each other’s routines experience greater anger and sadness.

Working from home together during the pandemic has put considerable strain on people’s relationships.

One of the major reasons is the disruption of each other’s routines.

Now, a new study has found that couples who interfere more with each other’s routines experience greater anger and sadness.

This leads to perceiving the relationship as more turbulent.

Greater awareness and consideration of your partner’s routines, though, can help reduce relationship strain.

Mr Kevin Knoster, the study’s first author, explained:

“When you are impeding your significant other from accomplishing their goals or are disrupting their daily routines, there will be emotional responses.

Based on our findings, more interference from your spouse leads to sadness and anger, and that’s independent from one another.

This can lead to perceptions of a turbulent relationship.”

The study included 165 couples who were surveyed during the first peak of the pandemic in April 2020.

They were asked how much their spouse disrupted their routine and how they viewed the relationship.

The researchers interpreted the results using ‘relational turbulence theory’.

This is the idea that periods of instability can easily create problems within the relationship.

Partners can feel more uncertain about their commitment to the relationship and its future.

Like many of those in his study and around the world, Mr Knoster found himself experiencing ‘relationship turbulence’:

“Like a lot of people, we, too, had to adapt on the fly all of a sudden to working from home.

Our routines were in a state of a flux.”

Mr Knoster ended up disrupting his wife’s routines from time-to-time:

“I step on her toes every now and then.

I teach classes from home (on the computer) and her office is through a closed door behind me.

If she needs to go to the restroom, she has to walk behind me so she may be thinking, ‘Do I need to coordinate with his schedule just to wash my hands?’

It’s interesting.

It’s changed our professional lives and personal lives in more ways than we think.”

The answer is to be more considerate, says Mr Knoster:

“…when you and your partner support each other’s goals and accommodate routines, that elicits positive emotional reactions.

We need to remember to catch our breaths for a moment and work together.

It’s more important now that we’re sort of sequestered inside at all hours of the day and starting to feel like rats in a cage.”

The study was published in the journal Communication Research Reports (Knoster et al., 2020).

The Modern Way To Kill Your Relationship

This could be damaging romantic relationships and leading to depression.

This could be damaging romantic relationships and leading to depression.

Over 70 percent of married couples report that mobile phones frequently interfere with their relationship, psychological research concludes.

The divided attention they create can easily lead to relationship conflict.

Here are some common examples of irritating behaviour:

  • My partner places his or her phone where they can see it when we are together.
  • My partner keeps his or her phone in their hand when he or she is with me.
  • My partner glances at his/her phone when talking to me.

Professor David Sbarra, who has reviewed the research, said:

“When you are distracted into or by the device, then your attention is divided, and being responsive to our partners — an essential ingredient for building intimacy — requires attention in the here and now.”

However, phones can be very difficult to resist because of the way our brains work.

Professor Sbarra explained:

“The draw or pull of a smartphone is connected to very old modules in the brain that were critical to our survival, and central to the ways we connect with others are self-disclosure and responsiveness.

Evolution shaped self-disclosure and responsiveness in the context of small kin networks, and we now see these behaviors being cued more or less constantly by social networking sites and through our phones.

We now have the outer-most edges of our social network cue us for responsiveness.

Look no further than the next person you see scrolling through Facebook and mindlessly hitting the ‘like’ button while his kid is trying to tell him a story.”

However, technology is not necessarily good or bad in itself, said Professor Sbarra:

“We stay away from the question of whether social networking sites and smartphone use are good or bad, per se.

Technology is everywhere, and it’s not going away, nor should it.

Humans are still trying to cope with a huge social change, said Professor Sbarra:

“Between 2000 and 2018, we’ve seen the largest technological advances, arguably, at any point in the last 100 years.

We are interested in understanding the role of social relationships in human well-being.

We can understand this from the level of what individuals do in relationships, but we can also understand it at the level of societal changes and societal forces that may push on relationships.”

The study is to be published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science (Sbarra et al., 2019).

One Simple Phrase Helps People Stay Positive (M)

This way of responding to upsetting emotions improves people’s mood.

This way of responding to upsetting emotions improves people's mood.


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Flirting: The Most Effective Facial Expression (M)

When women use this expression, men are able to recognise it and tell it apart from ordinary polite smiling or a neutral expression.

When women use this expression, men are able to recognise it and tell it apart from ordinary polite smiling or a neutral expression.

The most effective expression for flirting involves the head turned to one side and tilted downwards a little, a slight smile and eye contact.

When women use this expression, men are able to recognise it and tell it apart from ordinary polite smiling or a neutral expression.

The expression automatically makes men think about relationships and sex, researchers found.

In general, men can be quite poor at reading facial expressions.

They typically over-interpret polite smiling to express romantic interest, which can lead to misunderstandings.

The conclusion comes from a new study of the most effective expressions for flirting.

Professor Omri Gillath, study co-author, said:

“There are very few scientific articles out there that have systematically studied this well-known phenomenon.

None of these studies have identified the flirting facial expression and tested its effects.”

The researchers carried out a series of six studies, Professor Gillath explained:

“Across our six studies, we found most men were able to recognize a certain female facial expression as representing flirting.

It has a unique morphology, and it’s different from expressions that have similar features — for example, smiling — but aren’t identified by men as flirting expression.”

For the study, women — some of whom were professional actresses — were asked to pose flirting expressions.

One expression emerged as being almost universally recognised by men as a flirting sign:

  • Head tilted down and held on one side,
  • eyes turned towards the man,
  • and a slight smile.

Compared to happy or neutral facial expressions, men subsequently had sex on the mind after seeing this expression.

Professor Gillath said:

“Our findings support the role of flirtatious expression in communication and mating initiation.

For the first time, not only were we able to isolate and identify the expressions that represent flirting, but we were also able to reveal their function — to activate associations related with relationships and sex.”

The study was published in The Journal of Sex Research (Haj-Mohamadi et al., 2020).