Thank goodness for scientists. Honest to God, sometimes they’re the only ones who can give me the laugh for my day.*

**Researches from Iowa State University just spent oodles of time and money, questioning couples who had been married for seven years and who were relatively happy with each other. The goal of the study was to figure out what made for a happy marriage. They had the couples answer questions to determine the ‘problem areas’ of their relationship. Then, researchers videotaped the couples discussing this problem and rated the couples on their behaviours: avoidance, discussion, blame, pressure for change, etc.

And what did they find?

Quoting David Vogel (one of the lead psychologists in the study): “The study…suggests that the marriage is a place where women can exert some power…they are, at least, taking responsibility and power in these relationships.”

In other words ladies and gentlemen, these researchers spent money and time to find out that a happy marriage is one where the woman gets her own way.

**shakes head**

You know, I’m pretty sure that men already knew that.

*Having been a smart ass about scientists telling us the blatantly obvious, let me know say that some studies are tremendously exciting (i.e. brain wave studies) and when it comes to newspaper articles, I must defend scientists and say that a lot of these studies are taken out of context. Most psychological studies are very narrow in the field they’re investigating and too often the results are taken by lay people and implemented with disastrous results. Take for example the Whole Word Reading fiasco that burned through Canadian schools a few years back. It was based on a study that said adults don’t read so much as we recognize whole words, skim and thereby increase our efficiency. Educational bureaucrats took this and implemented a new curriculum, forgetting that the adults in question had all learned to read with phonics, that adults have at least 20 years of reading history versus the average 6 year old, and the study was investigating adult, not juvenile, reading patterns. What ended up happening was hundreds of children who could recognize words, but because they hadn’t been taught phonics, they were screwed when it came to words they didn’t recognize (think of the difference between having a tool that helps you learn new words, versus the effort involved in memorizing–for that’s what it amounted to–every single word in the English language).

**Information and quote taken from the Edmonton Journal’s article “Key to Happy Marriage: Let Wife Rule Roost” taken from (I’m assuming this is a journalist) Reuters in New York.