Changes in happiness, sadness, anxiety, and anger around romantic relationship events.

Abstract

Most people agree that romantic relationships greatly affect how we feel. For example, we typically feel happier when getting married but sadder when breaking up. However, previous research primarily focused on changes in cognitive but less so affective well-being around positive and negative relationship events. Set-point theory suggests that subjective well-being might change shortly around such experiences but bounce back in the long run. Using data from the Socio-Economic Panel study (SOEP), we examined changes in life satisfaction, happiness, sadness, anxiety, and anger in the 5 years before and 5 years after moving in with a partner (N = 4,399), marriage (N = 3,731), separation (N = 3,538), and divorce (N = 1,103). Life satisfaction and happiness increased slightly in the years before moving in and marriage. For marriage, these effects were short-lived and diminished after 1 year. Separation and divorce were associated with much larger well-being impairments (especially a strong increase of sadness) that were most pronounced shortly before and after the event and attenuated in the following years. Changes in anxiety and anger were much smaller. Our findings suggest that romantic relationship events not only relate to substantial changes in life satisfaction but also affective well-being. These changes vary for different well-being facets, are most pronounced for happiness and sadness at the time of the event, and bounce back in the long run. As one of the first studies, we demonstrate that set-point theory not only applies to cognitive but also affective well-being around romantic relationship events.

Working life as a double-edged sword: Opposing changes in subjective well-being surrounding the transition to work and retirement.

“…Means and standard deviations for life satisfaction, happiness, sadness, anxiety, and anger in individual years before and after the transition can be found in Table S4 in the online supplemental materials. ASSELMANN AND SPECHT 8 suggest stability (Asselmann & Specht, 2022a, 2022b, 2023a, 2023b. In contrast to our study, previous research rarely distinguished between affective changes before versus after retirement, which might partially explain seemingly inconsistent results.…”

“…Comparatively little is known about affective changes around the start of work and retirement, and little evidence speaks for overall changes in affective well-being around the respective transition (Kettlewell et al, 2020;Luhmann et al, 2012). As suggested by previous research, some life events have opposite effects on different well-being components (Asselmann & Specht, 2022a, 2022b, 2023a, 2023b. For example, sadness and anger decreased, while anxiety increased in the years before becoming a parent (Asselmann & Specht, 2023a).…”

Baby bliss: Longitudinal evidence for set-point theory around childbirth for cognitive and affective well-being.

“…This study concentrated on SOEP participants who experienced the birth of their first child between 2007 and 2019. Consistent with recent publications on within-person well-being changes around major life events (Asselmann & Specht, 2022, 2022a) and research on childbirth (Asselmann & Specht, 2021), the following exclusion criteria were applied: Because the focus was within-person well-being changes around childbirth, participants providing well-being data only once during the study period were excluded ( N = 1,046). Because a few panel members reported that they had become parents at an implausibly high age, parents older than 50 years at childbirth ( N = 15) were excluded, resulting in 5,532 parents ( N = 2,957 mothers and N = 2,575 fathers).…”

“…Over and above these changes, we analyzed short-term effects to test for well-being differences in the first year of parenthood and long-term effects to test for well-being differences more than one year after childbirth versus the years before. In line with recent publications (Asselmann et al, 2022; Asselmann & Specht, 2021; 2022a; Denissen et al, 2019), five years before and five years after childbirth were considered. We believe that this time frame is ideally suited to model both short- and long-term well-being changes, which at the same time are not too far from the actual transition.…”

Dramatic effects but fast adaptation: Changes in life satisfaction and different facets of affective well‐being around the death of a partner and death of a child

“…Similar to previous publications (Asselmann & Specht, in press, 2020a, 2020b, 2021a, 2021b; Denissen et al, 2019), we applied multilevel analyses with measurement occasions (Level 1) nested within persons (Level 2) nested within households (Level 3). Because participants may have moved during the study, their household number in the year of the event was considered.…”