Married Men Behave Better

For a while now, researchers have been arguing that marriage reduces aggressive and illegal behaviors in men, and now, a Michigan State University behavior geneticist, found that the reason for this was matrimony itself but also the fact that less 'antisocial' men are simply more likely to get married.

S. Alexandra Burt and colleagues concluded that less antisocial men are more likely to get married, and once they do, the married life seems to inhibit all antisocial behavior.

This is actually the first study to focus on the effects that matrimony can have on antisocial behavior, by using a genetically informative twin sample, so that the effects of genes on these associations, would be ruled out.

The team examined data on 289 pairs of male twins, at ages 17,20,24 and 29.

The results showed that men who were less antisocial at ages 17 and 20, had more chances of being married by age 29.

In this case, the researchers refer to the act of entering into marriage as a selection process, and this is very important because previous studies found little support that selection process influenced reduced rates of antisocial behavior in married men.

Burt, who is also an associate professor of psychology, said that the “results indicate that the reduced rate of antisocial behavior in married men is more complicated than we previously thought.

“Marriage is generally good for men, at least in terms of reducing antisocial behavior, but the data also indicate that it's not random who enters into the state of marriage.”

She said that there is a chance that her findings are slightly different from past studies, since marital rates have significantly decreased these past years, unlike in the 1950s, when marriage was more of the norm and selection was not a real factor.

One the men were married the antisocial behavior rate decreased even more, Burt said.

So she compared married to unmarried twins, and found that the married ones had a lower tendency of engaging in antisocial behavior than their unmarried brothers.

To the question why would marriage influence men's antisocial behavior directly, Burt says that it doesn't actually, but rather marriage becomes a marker for social bonding or less time spent with delinquent friends.

And last but not least, one of the main factors in all this is the quality of the marriage: the better the marriage, the lower the antisocial behavior tends to be.

This study is presented in the December issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.