How One Unhappy Partner Can Drag the Other Down

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Romantic partners tend to be similar in several ways. They have similar attitudes, personality traits, and even similar levels of physical attractiveness. They are also similar in how happy they are. It could be that birds of a feather flock together—happy people are attracted to happy people and misery loves company. However, research has shown that this similarity tends to increase over time. This could be because both couple members experience similar life events that affect their happiness. But another intriguing possibility is that partners could influence each other's level of happiness. Happiness, or unhappiness, could be contagious. If so, which partner is more likely to influence the well-being of the other, the happier partner or the less happy partner? New research by Olga Stavrova and William Chopik, just published in the journal, Social Psychological and Personality Science explores well-being contagion within couples.

How Partners Influence Each Other’s Happiness

Moods tend to be contagious. Numerous studies on depression show that depressive states can be contagious between people. This is especially likely to occur in couples, whose day-to-day experiences are so intertwined. For example, one study found that on days when one partner reported poor mood, so did the other.

But which partner has more influence, the happier partner or the less happy partner? Much research in psychology supports the notion that bad is stronger than good. For example, people are more upset about losing $20 than they are happy about gaining $20. In studies of marital conflict, negative behaviors have a bigger influence on satisfaction than positive behaviors, and negative social interactions have a larger influence on health and well-being than positive ones. This suggests that the unhappy partner is more likely to influence the happy partner than vice versa.

The Research

Stavrova and Chopik used data from two large long-term studies of couples. The first study included a sample of over 18,000 German couples who completed an annual survey for 37 years. Each year, both partners rated their level of life satisfaction on a 10-point scale. The results showed that the happier partner experienced a decrease in satisfaction over time, whereas the less happy partner held steady. By the end of the 37 years, the initially happier partner experienced, on average, a 2.2-point drop in satisfaction. This change was so profound that by the end of the 37 years, on average, the happier partner had become the less happy partner.

To test a broader set of variables relating to well-being, the researchers also analyzed data from a Dutch sample of about 3,000 couples who were surveyed annually for 14 years. Respondents completed questionnaires assessing their life satisfaction, positive emotions, negative emotions, and self-esteem. For all four of these outcomes, the happier partner's scores declined over time, and the less happy partner improved somewhat. However, they didn't exactly meet in the middle; the declines experienced by the happier partner were greater than the improvements experienced by the less happy partner.

A savvy reader may suspect that this occurred because the happiest people just tend to show the biggest declines. When you start high, there is a long way to fall. However, additional analyses revealed that this was not the case in either of these studies. It was the participants who were the least happy to start with who showed the largest declines in well-being.

In Sum

These studies both found that well-being is contagious. Romantic partners' happiness levels tended to become more similar over time. However, rather than the two partners meeting somewhere in the middle, the less happy partner had an outsized influence. As with many other psychological phenomena, the good outweighs the bad, and the less happy partner tends to bring the happier partner down.

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