Wolfers and Stevenson say that in no-fault states, there was a 10 percent drop in a woman's chance of being killed by her spouse or boyfriend. The rate of female suicide in new no-fault states fell by about 20 percent. The effect was more dramatic still for domestic violence—which "declined by somewhere between a quarter and a half between 1976 and 1985 in those states that reformed their divorce laws," according to Stevenson and Wolfers.This is huge, especially since the most popular explanation is that this is a consequence of the equalization of power that no-fault divorce allows. The more equal partners are in marriage, the better things are for women and the lower the divorce rate is. Woot!
Though on the truly strange front, there is evidence that being on the pill may impair a woman's ability to use smell as a guide to good genetic partnerships. Interestingly, the pill seems to encourage genetic similarity in couples and such genetic similarity has been linked to everything from fertility problems to a greater risk of adultery. For more on how important smell is see this post or just watch High Fidelity.
Though, the extent to which we are beginning to find people over the internet seems contrary to the importance of such things. In a recent survey of 10,000 people married in 2006 and 2007 19% of them had found their spouse online, more than had either met through work or been introduced through friends. Also, our online communications seem to be reaffirming the six-degrees-of-separation hypothesis that has been getting bad press, or at least showing evidence for it among frequent users of IM clients.
The other interesting counterpoint to the smell studies confirming the importance of genetic dissimilarity is the increasingly detailed information about the value of similarity in other areas for the long term survival of relationships. A German study on couples and personality traits found that couples were most likely to get together and stay together when they were alike in conscientiousness and agreeableness. Openness also had an effect on couples getting together, but not on their long-term chances. However, neither similar levels of extroversion or emotional stability seemed be a factor for couples at all. The article has the title "Folklore gets it wrong on love matches" but I think this is actually a really interesting example of the way folklore can get constituted and why it often comes to different conclusions than more regimented scientific inquiry, but shouldn't be simply discounted. Of those five major personality traits extroversion and emotional stability are the of the more easily observed from the position of people who have loose ties to a couple. When there is a small community, everyone knows how extroverted and emotional stable other people are because these are often traits that are easily observed even from afar. If you talk to everyone or ever throw a temper tantrum in public people know and tell others. However, being conscientious is something that is only recognizable if you have gobs of it or people work closely with you and have to depend on you. Agreeableness is similar; almost all people (unless they are very shy or very emotional unstable) try to make themselves a little agreeable to strangers. So the very traits that are easiest to recognize for people who don't know you well are also the ones where it doesn't matter if you are like your spouse.
Last, humans are really, really biased towards pretty people. This is why I sometimes have problems with people who protest our material culture when it comes to looks. I agree with them that the pictures we are bombarded with in magazines (where Photoshop horrors are far too common) and on TV are unrealistic and contribute to a cultural understanding of beauty that is incredibly damaging, especially for women...but this is not all a cultural phenomenon and humans react to physical attractiveness in ways that are far too hard-wired for us to just deny. I do think we should be working towards expanding notions of beauty rather than berating people who are not perfect, but I think the point at which we start to look down on people for trying to change their appearance is the point where we become part of the problem. While I am not a huge fan of pain for beauty making fun of someone who has gotten plastic surgery is not any less moral repugnant then making fun of someone because their weight falls outside of narrowly defined bounds.
I've actually been thinking about these issues quite a bit recently because I am about to undergo a procedure that is classed as plastic surgery for my acne scarring. I know I am not an unattractive person, but I am a person who doesn't particularly like to look at herself in the mirror if a) my glasses are on and b) I don't have on makeup. My scarring is not as bad as many other people's, but it is something that I feel very insecure about and anyone who says that it is silly for me to want to change it has clearly not lived with something of the sort. Having said that, a plastic surgeon's office is a horrible place to go if you want to feel good about yourself. I went in for my acne scarring and (because one of the procedures I was considering would have required taking fat from another part of my body) still ended up having the surgeon just start grabbing parts of my body to see how much body fat I had and making an offhand comment about how there was plenty on my thighs and they might even be able to do something about that at the same time as my face if I wanted them to. Um, no. I don't entirely know how we fight the twin voices of unrealistic physical perfection and denial of the importance of looks, but I know that either extreme is a very bad thing and the damage they cause seems to fall disproportionately on women. I worry about it.
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