The following is a news item selected by the Hitched editors during the week of October 30, 2014.
The One Personality Trait That Can Influence Your Spouse’s Career Success
In a new paper published in the journal Psychological Science titled, “The Long Reach of One’s Spouse: Spouses’ Personality Influences Occupational Success” authors Brittany Solomon and Joshua Jackson used a study of 4,500 married Australian couples and measured them with a common personality test known as the Big Five. This test looks at five personality traits, including: extraversion (how outgoing and sociable a person is), agreeableness (how honest and sympathetic someone is, versus suspicious and unfriendly), conscientiousness (how well someone can plan and be productive, rather than be disorganized and impulsive), neuroticism (how anxiety-prone someone is) and openness (how naturally curious and open to change a person is). What the researchers found was that only conscientiousness was linked to their spouse’s career success, which was associated with job satisfaction, promotions and income.
Now, when looking at an individuals own career and personality traits, the other four characteristics played a role. In a blog on the Washington Post, Jackson, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, says there are two reasons he believes conscientiousness has an impact on a spouse’s career. First is that “people often emulate their spouses’ behavior, meaning a husband’s or wife’s industriousness and organizational skills might rub off on the other. The second reason is that when a person’s spouse is organized, efficient and hard working, they’re probably tackling the bulk of the household chores, freeing their husband or wife up to focus more on his or her job.”
Being a Grandma Might Help With Hot Flashes
Mother Nature can show no mercy, that is, unless you’re a grandmother. In which case you might have tempered hot flashes and night sweats during menopause. Researchers at The Kinsey Institute and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center studied 117 women who went into rapid menopause following the surgical removal of their ovaries: 69 of whom were menopausal or postmenopausal at the time of their surgery, 29 of them having at least one child at home, and 48 women were premenopausal, with 28 of them having at least one child at home. According to the Kinsey Institute website, “Researchers measured hot flashes and night sweats just prior to the surgery and then again at two months, six months and 12 months post-surgery.” The researchers note that the culture of grandmothering is seen across cultures throughout time, but wondered how it fits into our survival.
What they found, according to Tierney Lorenz, an author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at The Kinsey Institute was, “Women who were menopausal when our study began, those with young children at home actually showed more symptoms of hot flashes. But the women who underwent rapid menopause because of the surgical removal of their ovaries showed a dramatic reduction of symptoms.”
The researchers acknowledge that this is one of the first studies involving social interaction and menopause symptoms—looking to control for the age and their relationships with young children. Lorenz warns that much more study is necessary before any true conclusions can be made, although this is a step in better understanding the effects of the hormone oxytocin. For example, the reduced symptoms of menopause only occurred amongst women with children younger than 13 years of age.
Steve Cooper is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Hitched. You can follow him on Twitter at @hitchedmedia.
