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The Science of When to Get Married
How do we pick the moment at which we finally decide to settle down? When it comes to romantic decision-making, neuroscientists say the rational part of our brain gets dumped.
How do we make romantic decisions? Should we go with our gut, or use the empirical model, approaching love with the comforting certainty of a pro-and-con list? Advances in neuroscience are revealing how the brain makes such choices – including the choice of who we decide to settle down with for life, and how we decide when to do that.
“We know from how the brain works that there is so much information that cannot be accounted for in a spreadsheet,” says Jonah Lehrer, whose new book, How We Decide, presents the latest research on the process of decision-making.
In other words, our rational sides are simply not equipped to make complex and far-reaching decisions like when to get married. “The rational brain can only take in seven pieces of information at one time,” Lehrer says. “When it gets more than that, it’s like an old computer trying to run Vista.”
“The rational brain can only take in seven pieces of information at one time,” Lehrer says. “When it gets more than that, it’s like an old computer trying to run Vista.”
Because of this limitation – and because love brings with it such a bombardment of considerations – Lehrer is a proponent of listening to the emotional part of our brains when making such decisions, which can process more information than the analytical part.
This part of the brain is called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). When we are drawn to a person (or a type of music, or an ice cream flavor), that’s the OFC flexing its mental muscle. It’s the part of the brain that integrates visceral emotions into the decision-making process, and reacts to feelings of reward.
The OFC can be remarkably adept at picking up on unconscious emotional cues – it’s where the emotion is manifested from the unconscious to the conscious. Lehrer had one of these moments when he met his wife -- he got so flustered that he gave her the wrong phone number. “I was impressed by how useless and flabbergasted I was because I always thought of myself as empirical and rational,” he says. After his foray into the labs of many of the world’s leading neuroscientists, Lehrer believes this experience was his OFC absorbing some crucial piece of information he wasn’t consciously aware of.
But what is the margin of error for the OFC? Should it be trusted for solving conundrums of love and long-term compatibility? Not entirely. Your emotional brain, like your rational brain, is not always correct and can be misled by factors both personal and external.
Charles Darwin, the quintessential rationalist, tried to use only logic to make such decisions. When he wrote “This is the Question,” a set of notes he drafted between 1837 and 1838, he was not pondering finches. “This is the Question” represented the evolutionary theorist’s attempt to logically evaluate whether he should marry his girlfriend, Emma Wedgwood.
Using his trademark rationality, Darwin made two columns: “Marry” and “Not Marry.”
In the ”Marry” column, he entered things like: “Home and someone to take care of house—Charms of music and female chit-chat. These things good for one’s health.” In the “Not Marry” column was: “Freedom to go where one liked—Choice of Society and little of it. Conversations of clever men at clubs. Not forced to visit relatives, and to bend to every little trifle.”
The Origin of Species author used this dispassionate calculation to ultimately reach a conclusion. On January 29, 1839, Miss Emma Wedgwood became Mrs. Emma Darwin.
Darwin’s struggle to make such a decision intelligently is hardly a dusty vestige of another era. But, “the kind of list that Darwin made was completely useless,” says Lehrer.
Lehrer argues that while unconscious emotional instincts can have merit, he doesn’t believe they should be acted upon immediately. In fact, he waited years before proposing to his wife. Nor is he a confederate of the Blink school of thought, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, which promotes the value of rapid decision-making, or “thinking without thinking.”
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I say nonsense. The decision on who to marry cannot be reduced to pragmatic rational analysis the way these scientists postulate it. It is a purely emotional decision. People change over time. I don't see how you can project that far ahead.
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I think the decision to marry is better thought of as a psychosis than a rationale or irrational thought process.
Interesting article. In terms of the span of history, deciding whom to marry on one's own is a fairly recent convention; prior to this, of course, almost all marriages were arranged (at least, as I understand it). (Indeed, arranged marriages continue to take place in some cultures.) I realize that the motives behind some were economic and/or political, but I wonder whether the underlying premise of arranged marriages in many cases was that rational decision-making in regard to romantic relationships is not always easy and that protective parents are oftentimes better able to spot character flaws of potential spouses for their children and are able to be more objective. I'm not advocating for arranged marriages here; rather, I'm just wondering whether the desire to protect one's children contributed, in part, to the historical prevalence of them.
Girlfriend? Ms. Wedgwood was Darwin's first cousin.
so THAT'S what happened to the species...
oops, that's counter-evolutionary.
Science will never keep up with the human behavior: it is a moving target and new insights will always require the kind of slavish, systematic re-thinking that is the essence of science.
I am sure there is some truth to the cognitive neuro-science approach, but it is too descriptive and, like socio-biology, lacks poetry. Love is poetry.
The triumph of optimism over experience.
ok, so it's a given: we don't think rationally when we think marriage.
How's this postulate: if we add rationality into our decision making, do you think it will impact the almost 50% divorce rates our hearts have led us to?
How about.. "when it's finally legal for me to marry my partner of 9 years"?
Getting married today is the moral equivalent of joining an all-white country club in the 60's.
maybe most divorces are irrational
Men tend to think objectively and women tend to think subjectively - this mix makes alot of understood conversation difficult outside of the bedroom. The reasons for marriage vary widely also - some for companioonship, some for sex, some for financial security, some are tired of dating, some want children, some want social status, some want to please parents, some just want out of the house, and on and on. Few actually think about why they want to get married, who they are thinking of marrying, when to get married (at what stage of their life),and many of the other complications that are not given enough weight before the rush into marriage - like religion, family background, cultural traditions, maturity, financial readiness and understanding of budgets. In too many situations it tends to be a leap of faith. It keeps people in Marriage and Family Counseling busy trying to clear up the problems before the courts get involved between couples and their children-the real losers in a divorce.
i feel misled by the title -- i thought this was going to be about age of marriage!
Slim45: "The decision on who to marry cannot be reduced to pragmatic rational analysis the way these scientists postulate it. It is a purely emotional decision...."
Did you NOT read the article? They are saying precisely that -- go with your emotional 'gut'.
Sheesh. Reading comprehension score -1
Just a quick correction. When Charles Darwin made that list, he wasn't thinking of Emma yet. It was a list about whether or not he should get married at all--not to a specific person. Once he decided to get married, and once he decided on Emma (and she said yes), he was about as romantic as you can get. And he was a devoted and attentive husband and father.
this chemical dopamine. If you break down its components,
Dop a mine
Dop: Obvious what this is.
A: ok..that is the first letter of the English Alphabet.
Mine: me me me me.
Dopamine. None of that made any real sense, Just like all the rest of this stuff. Oh love! Gimme some more of that dopamine drip!! I'm inlove with my cousin! Yes! I want mutated babies too!
Thank you.
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