Relationship Research is WEIRD—Here's Why

This episode is going to be slightly different from the standard Relationship Doctor episode. In honor of National Coming Out Day, which is October 11th this year, I felt it was important to address how—and why—some relationship research may not always resonate with everyone who listens to this show.

Whether you're listening to this podcast or perusing relationship research generally, there are a few things you should keep in mind, especially when applying some of what you learn to your own relationship.

Studies of romantic relationships typically occur in social science fields like psychology or communication. Over the past decade, research in these fields has relied on samples that researchers summarize with the acronym WEIRD.

That is, many of our samples are made up of people from

Western
Educated
Industrialized
Rich
and
Democratic

societies, such as the United States. 

Moreover, even samples that come from the United States don’t always reflect the general population of the country. Compared to the general population, research participants are more often white, educated, and from urban areas.

Why does it matter that relationship research is WEIRD?

A lot of relationship research has assumed that certain behaviors or tactics in relationships have the same impact regardless of who is in those relationships—that is, regardless of how much money their make, their race, sexual orientation, and other key factors. Only recently have researchers started to consider how these assumptions might be wrong, and how a "one-size-fits-all" approach to relationships may not work.

Advances in statistical modeling are helping researchers identify subgroups or "types" of relationships. For example, prior work has found that marital satisfaction steadily decreases over time, leading some to believe that the happiest day of your relationship will be your wedding day.

New research, however, is finding that only a subset of couples experience declines in relationship satisfaction over the course of their marriage. What they believe happened in prior research is that those who experienced a decline in satisfaction really felt a decline, and brought down the average of the whole sample.

Another pillar of relationship research that is being re-examined is...

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