This particular case study is usually difficult to grade as it often impacts people more realistically than other assignments because we tend to identify with the characters, either from first hand experience, or experience with friends and family getting married. It’s also difficult because I set up a dichotomous choice: either the couple should sign or not, and many students prefer to say it depends. How one goes about deciding whether a signature should occur or not is the point of the assignment, and what I try to do is see where people stand.

You may have noticed that there are two versions of this case study. I try to divide the class, more or less, where the roles in the case study are completely reversed. The original case study (Version A) comes from a more traditional point of view, where the man owns the house and expects the wife to sign a prenuptial. This scenario, of course, is reflecting society less and less. Version B has the roles reversed.

I thought it would be interesting to track how students responded to this assignment with this role reversal. I just started tracking a few quarters ago, and I’ll add your data to it so that I can get larger data points. It’s just something interesting to review.

So the answer is that they need to communicate, right? Does this mean that the person asking for the prenup isn't communicating? That one of them might be revisiting trust vs mistrust? That they are both dealing with intimacy vs isolation? As for your responses, it’s important to note that there is something odd about the timing of the prenuptial request. Why such short notice? Most of you correctly, in one way or another, pointed out that the two are on different pages in terms of their identity development. At issue is whether this difference is a simple misunderstanding, or whether there is a deeper problem, perhaps rooted in personality (Identity). Relationships are hard because we like to maintain our identity by maintaining our separateness (individuality), but long term intimacy requires us to soften this boundary that we have grown accustomed to. Healthy relationships demand that we let some things go that we hold important; otherwise, you are simply exerting your will over someone else, and in the long run that tends to create problems and unhealthy living.

Also, a very important point lost on many students is that Erikson made it very clear that previous stages, no matter how they are resolved, can be revisited. This is especially true regarding trust vs. mistrust. And to use some behavioral lingo, how we handled the crisis in the past is a good predictor on how we’ll handle similar crises in the future. So, perhaps trust is important here.

Related to concrete suggestions for the couple: It’s very easy to get wrapped up in an analytical effort to ‘solve’ the problem that these two are facing—in fact that’s what the assignment asks. Just like everything human, there are no ‘get fixed quick’ manuals, and pure reason and logic will rarely solve such relationship difficulties. Joining together in a relationship often means that we must protect the feelings of our companion, no matter how unreasonable they may appear to some “objective” observer. Compromise is hard because we like to be right. And being right is self-validating andimpacts upon our self-esteem (which is related to our personality/identity). The alternative is existentially scary--when you are wrong, it's not just you made a mistake because making mistakes, for some, taps into their sense of confidence. But that’s short term scary. Long term scary is that you end up alone because no one can stand to be with you very long. Or involved with someone merely because you are afraid to be alone with yourself.

As for divorce rates, there is a myth that divorce rates are high. They are not. There is a myth that the divorce rate is around 50%, but it’s more likely around 25%. It depends on where you get your data. When you look at lifetime rates of marriage and divorce, you get the 25% figure. Other figures can be found when you look at different time frames. I think that’s where the 50% rate comes from. Your book claims a 50% divorce rate (I think it’s on page 551 of the 6th edition), but doesn’t offer a citation for that claim. I believe that every year, per 2000 people in the general population, 15 get married. Within that same 2000 people, 7 file for divorce. But to claim that this means that your chance of getting divorced, within your lifetime, is 50%, is a mistake. If instead I said that the birth rate was 7.5% and the death rate was 3.5 percent, would you say that the death rate is 50%? That you have a 50% chance of dying this year? The divorce rate is a hard statistic to track because you have to track people over decades. It’s not easy but I think a better estimate is between 20 and 30%. It's not low, but I wouldn't say it's high.

Last point related to divorces: you can predict with 91% accuracy who will get divorced by how couples fight—not whether they fight (they all do) but how they fight. John Gottman found that “[Marriage Masters] made at least 5 positive remarks or gestures toward each other for every zinger during a fight. [That’s right; DURING a fight] In calmer times, their positive to negative ratio was an outstanding 20 to 1. ‘Masters of disaster’ couples were pretty much the opposite” (The Top 10; The Most Influential Therapists of the Past Quarter-Century, Psychotherapy Networker, Washington: Mar/Apr 2007. Vol. 31, iss. 2). Gottman is/was a professor at the UW.

For what it is worth, I started switching the roles around in this case study because one of my classes had a very strong reaction to these questions, where most of women in the class argued that the pre-nup should be signed. It was interesting for me because up until that time my students tended to fall down traditional sides, men wanting the prenup, whereas the women didn’t.

Based on 102 ‘subjects,’ 24 of which are male, the following graphs break down how 5 of my courses have answered the question.

First, I simply count who said ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Originally, most students said ‘yes, a prenuptial should be signed.’ But now, it’s mostly equal: 53 say ‘No’ while 49 say ‘Yes’ a prenup should be signed.

This next graph I broke the numbers down by Version. If you took these small differences and assume they are real, what it might show is that people are biased in favor of the bride—if the man asks for a prenup, most say ‘don’t sign,’ but if the woman asks for the prenup, the reverse occurs and most say ‘yes, sign.’ Could it be that students are influenced by how the issue is presented?

This next graph is probably the most controversial, mostly because I simply don’t get many male students in my class. But what this tells me is that for the male students, they answer the prenup question ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at about the same rate. Women, however, seem to be biased towards the female’s point of view in the case study. In other words, if the woman asks for the prenup, as in Version B, more female students say ‘yes, it should be signed,’ whereas if the man asks for the prenup, female students tend to say ‘don’t sign.’

All Data:

Please keep in mind that even though these charts tend to paint a certain picture, I think the data are highly suspect. The findings could simply reflect the disproportionate number of men who take Developmental Psych courses. As it stands now, the men appear to be less influenced by the different version of the case studies. However, the trend that could continue is that both sexes are biased. The change from last quarter is that Version B tends to reduce bias for all students, regardless of gender. Version A (where the man asks for the Prenup) seems to lead female students to defend the Bride, while men are trending towards defending the Groom. Again, given the lack of male students, this is complete speculation.

Earlier interpretations were based on the men appearing to be more objective, as they were equally split in both versions to sign or not sign the prenuptial. This gave the appearance the women might be biased, but other interpretations need to be ruled out. For instance, women may be more realistic or have a better understanding of the financial consequences of Divorce on women. If it can be shown that women have a harder time making an income than men, for example, than it is very likely that marriage and raising a family represents a large opportunity cost and that the woman is giving up more, financially, than a man.

I’m open to hearing other takes on this, so if you have them, share the wealth.