Twin Studies of the Marriage Benefit: Parsing Selection from Causation

婚姻利益的双胞胎研究：从因果关系解析选择

• 批准号: 8268381
• 负责人: ROBERT E EMERY
• 金额: $ 50.14万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-06-01 至 2014-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8268381
• 关键词: AVPR1A gene; Accounting; Address; Adolescent; Adult; Affect; Androgen Receptor; Australia; Behavioral; Candidate Disease Gene; Child; Childhood; Cohort Effect; Conflict (Psychology); Country; Couples; Data; Data Set; Divorce; Economics; Emotional; Environment; Etiology; Family; Family Policy; Family Relationship; Family Research; Family dynamics; Female; Genes; Genetic; Genotype; Goals; Government; Health; Health Benefit; Health behavior; Individual; Intervention; Interview; Knowledge; Learning; Life; Life Cycle Stages; Link; Longevity; Marital Relationships; Marital Status; Marriage; Marriage and Family; Measures; Mediator of activation protein; Mental Health; Methods; Monitor; Monozygotic twins; Multivariate Analysis; Outcome; Oxytocin Receptor; Pair Bond; Parenting behavior; Personal Satisfaction; Personality; Policies; Psychosocial Assessment and Care; Randomized; Receptor Gene; Registries; Religion and Spirituality; Remarriages; Research; Research Methodology; Research Technics; Resources; Saliva; Sampling; Scientist; Series; Sex Characteristics; Sexuality; Social Controls; Solutions; Stress; Swab; Sweden; Teenagers; Testing; Time; Translating; Trust; Twin Multiple Birth; Twin Studies; Vasopressin Receptor; Widowhood; Work; Workplace; base; behavior influence; child bearing; demographics; design; essays; experience; family structure; gene environment interaction; genetic selection; improved; men; peer; physical conditioning; programs; psychologic; satisfaction; social

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Family life is widely viewed as having a profound influence on both children and adults. However, broad changes in family structure have contributed to evolving, and controversial, ideas about what makes a "normal" or "healthy" family. Social scientists contribute both to basic knowledge about family life, and to social programs and political debates, by studying potential causes and consequences of different family experiences. These efforts are exceedingly important, especially given the prospect of altering family life in order to promote individual health and well-being. Our proposed work contributes to this important effort by focusing much of our effort on the question: Does marriage benefit social, emotional, psychological, and economic well-being - and even physical health and longevity? A large body of research suggests that marriage is correlated with these outcomes, but correlation does not mean causation. Or as two critics of marriage noted in a recent essay, "To say marriage creates wealth is to confuse correlation with causation. If there is more wealth in Manhattan than in Brooklyn, that does not mean that moving to Manhattan will make you wealthier." We are not only concerned that background and personality affects who gets and stays married, but we also know that genetic factors influence the likelihood that people will experience happy marriage or other key aspects of family life. Even as we raise this concern, however, we offer a method - studying twins - that solves not one but two huge scientific problems. Identical twins share the same genes, and they also share the same upbringing. Thus, when we compare identical twins, we eliminate the problem of nonrandom selection into experience based on background, prior experience, personality, and genes. In fact, the twin method allows us to determine cause and effect better than any available research technique, other than randomly assigning couples to marry, or not, divorce, or not, and so on, which, of course, is logistically and ethically impossible. We propose to study five unique samples of twins in the U.S., Australia, and Sweden (each sample offers special benefits) to test whether marriage (and single life, cohabitation, divorce, widowhood, and remarriage) really are likely to cause of the outcomes with which they are correlated. We also propose to study how genes and the environment work together to modify the "marriage benefit" for mental and physical health, including studying specific genes recently documented to influence behavior in close relationships. Finally, in order to enrich our highly technical quantitative analyses, we plan to interview identical twins to learn more about what makes them different, particularly how different experiences in marriage, romantic relationships, and relationship dissolution may alter their life course.

描述（由申请人提供）：家庭生活被广泛认为对儿童和成人都有深远的影响。然而，家庭结构的广泛变化导致了关于什么是“正常”或“健康”家庭的观念的演变和争议。社会科学家通过研究不同家庭经历的潜在原因和后果，既为家庭生活的基本知识做出贡献，也为社会项目和政治辩论做出贡献。这些努力极其重要，特别是考虑到为了促进个人健康和福祉而改变家庭生活的前景。我们提议的工作通过将我们的大部分精力集中在这样一个问题上，为这一重要的努力做出了贡献：婚姻是否有益于社会、情感、心理和经济福祉——甚至身体健康和长寿？大量研究表明，婚姻与这些结果相关，但相关并不意味着因果关系。或者正如两位婚姻评论家在最近的一篇文章中指出的那样，“说婚姻创造财富是混淆了相关性和因果关系。如果曼哈顿的财富比布鲁克林多，那并不意味着搬到曼哈顿会让你更富有。”我们不仅关心背景和性格会影响谁结婚和维持婚姻，我们还知道遗传因素会影响人们经历幸福婚姻或家庭生活其他关键方面的可能性。然而，即使我们提出了这种担忧，我们也提供了一种方法——研究双胞胎——它解决了两个而不是一个巨大的科学问题。同卵双胞胎有相同的基因，他们也有相同的成长经历。因此，当我们比较同卵双胞胎时，我们消除了基于背景、先前经验、个性和基因的非随机选择问题。事实上，双胞胎方法使我们能够比任何现有的研究技术更好地确定因果关系，而不是随机分配夫妇结婚或不结婚，离婚或不离婚等等，当然，这在逻辑上和道德上都是不可能的。我们建议研究美国、澳大利亚和瑞典的五个独特的双胞胎样本（每个样本都有特殊的好处），以测试婚姻（以及单身生活、同居、离婚、丧偶和再婚）是否真的可能导致与它们相关的结果。我们还建议研究基因和环境如何共同作用，以改变心理和身体健康的“婚姻利益”，包括研究最近记录的影响亲密关系行为的特定基因。最后，为了丰富我们高度技术性的定量分析，我们计划采访同卵双胞胎，以了解更多使他们不同的原因，特别是在婚姻、浪漫关系和关系解除方面的不同经历如何改变他们的生活轨迹。