Trust Gut Feelings When Tying the Knot, Researchers Say

A new study has found that 'gut feeling' is a good predictor of a successful marriage.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Florida State University, found that although couples might not be able to articulate their feelings, they instinctively know whether their marriage will be a success or not.

In other words, don't ignore any nagging feelings before a wedding. Your guts might be right.

"Although they may be largely unwilling or unable to verbalize them, people's automatic evaluations of their partners predict one of the most important outcomes of their lives - the trajectory of their marital satisfaction," the researchers wrote in a paper published in the journal Science.

The study was based on 135 heterosexual couples. Researchers followed-up with these couples every six months for about 4 years. The team found that a gut-level evaluation conducted at the beginning of the study was a better predictor of the marital success than other factors.

"Everyone wants to be in a good marriage," James K. McNulty, one of the study authors said in a new release. "And in the beginning, many people are able to convince themselves of that at a conscious level. But these automatic, gut-level responses are less influenced by what people want to think. You can't make yourself have a positive response through a lot of wishful thinking."

For the study, researchers asked individuals to rate their relationship satisfaction and report any discord with their partner. After marriage, participants were asked to rate their wedded-lives.

During one experiment, participants were shown a photo of their spouse for a brief moment on a computer screen. The images were followed by positive words such as "terrific" or "awesome" or negative words like 'terrible' or 'awful'. Respondents had to choose whether the words were positive or not. Researchers assessed each participant's reaction time.

"It's generally an easy task, but flashing a picture of their spouse makes people faster or slower depending on their automatic attitude toward the spouse," McNulty said in a news release. "People who have really positive feelings about their partners are very quick to indicate that words like 'awesome' are positive words and very slow to indicate that words like 'awful' are negative words."

The experts explained that if a person has a strong positive gut feeling about his/her partner, the brain will automatically choose the positive words. However, if a person is doubtful, then the brain needs time to process the information to come up with an answer, delaying reaction times.

Previously, researchers at University of Alberta too had cautioned against ignoring pre-wedding jitters. According to this study, couples who had doubts about their relationship before wedding had higher chances of having an unhappy marriage.