The pattern is backed up, at least among women, by an earlier and much smaller US study published in 2000, in which the researchers tested the personalities of just over 2,000 middle-aged participants twice over of a period of between six and nine years.
In that time, 20 of the women married while 29 of them divorced. Relative to those who tied the knot, the divorcees showed increased extroversion and openness, as if freed from the shackles of wedlock. Newly married men, by contrast, showed benefits compared with their divorced peers, scoring higher on conscientiousness and lower in neuroticism.
The conscientiousness boost among married men seems intuitive. Anyone who has been married (or in a long-term committed relationship) will know that it takes certain skills to keep the marital ship afloat through sometimes choppy domestic waters. Surely then, marriage will hone these skills. These are exactly the findings of a new paper published this year.
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