It's official! Marriage and committed romance can buffer against stress

Previous studies have shown that exchanging marital vows is good for people's health, and now, a new study suggests that having that long-term commitment also alters hormones in a way that reduces stress.

Dario Maestripieri, Professor in Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study, said that unmarried people in a committed, romantic relationship show the same reduced responses to stress, as do married people.

"These results suggest that single and unpaired individuals are more responsive to psychological stress than married individuals, a finding consistent with a growing body of evidence showing that marriage and social support can buffer against stress," Maestripieri said.

The team of researchers from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University studied 500 masters' degree students at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. About 40% of the men and 53% of the women were married or in relationships. The group included 348 men with a mean age of 29 and 153 women with a mean age of 27.

The students were asked to play a series of computer games that tested economic behaviours, and saliva samples were taken before and after to measure hormone levels and changes.

Each student was told that the test was a course requirement, and it would impact their future career placement. That made the test a potentially stressful experience that could affect levels of cortisol, known as the stress hormone.

The researchers found cortisol concentrations increased in all participants, but that females experienced a higher average increase than males. The exercise also decreased testosterone in male subjects, but not in females, a stress effect previously observed in humans and animals.

But a piece of personal information collected before the test provided another interesting difference within the subjects.

"We found that unpaired individuals of both sexes had higher cortisol levels than married individuals," Maestripieri said.

"Although marriage can be pretty stressful, it should make it easier for people to handle other stressors in their lives. What we found is that marriage has a dampening effect on cortisol responses to psychological stress, and that is very new," Maestripieri said.

The study has been published in the current issue of the journal Stress.