Hot MedFax

Who doesn't want her partner to say, "Hey, you look great in those jeans (and no, they don't make you look fat)"? Well, a new study is saying that the compliment could actually have negative physiological consequences . A team of researchers from Binghamton University recruited 65 married couples and had them engage in two interactions in which each spouse selected a discussion topic about a stressor external to their marriage (e.g. poor physical fitness, the desire to get a new job). Before and after the interactions, spouses separately completed questions about their expectations and appraisals of their partner’s responsiveness during the discussion, according to newswise.com. The researchers took saliva samples from each spouse and measured for cortisol—a hormone that helps regulate stress in the body—at the beginning of the study and after each discussion. The most consistent finding was that observable behaviors when support was given and received...

We're screwed. A new study says says good communication does not lead to marital satisfaction. Say what? It's not quite so grim.  What the study found was that it takes more than good communication (duh) to make a marriage successful.  "Although communication and satisfaction were correlated, communication wasn’t a good guide for determining partners’ satisfaction with their relationships over time,” says the study’s lead author Justin Lavner, an assistant professor in UGA’s clinical psychology program in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Although communication practices could predict satisfaction to some extent for some couples, the lack of a definitive causal relationship calls for additional attention to other factors that influence marital satisfaction, such as environmental stressors, what activities and interactions a couple has, and the personality traits of the individual partners. "It’s absolutely right to say more satisfied c...