Bella DePaulo (PhD, Harvard) has been single all her life. Don't expect her to get all apologetic about it. She loves living single - well, except for all of the singlism and matrimania. In these 89 essays, she provides her unique take on friends and family, health and happiness, love and money, marriage and maturity, pets and vets, religion and politics. She also explains why so many of the relevant stories in the media are just plain wrong. Many of these essays originally appeared in Living Single, Dr. DePaulo's popular blog for Psychology Today. Other writings were first published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Forbes.com, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times. Bella DePaulo's previous book was the groundbreaking "SINGLED OUT: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After" (St. Martin's Press). She has also published extensively on the psychology of lying. www.BellaDePaulo.com.
Do you think that getting married makes people happier and healthier and better off in all sorts of other psychological and interpersonal ways? Do you think that these are not just beliefs, but facts based on scientific research? No wonder. Celebrated scholars and authors such as Dan Gilbert and Dan Buettner have been telling us that. Judicial decisions point to those claims. Popular media narratives depend on them. There's just one problem: What we all think we know just isn't so. In THE SCIENCE OF MARRIAGE, Professor Bella DePaulo explains why these pervasive claims are just plain wrong. Dr. DePaulo is a Harvard Ph.D. with more than 100 scholarly publications. She taught graduate courses in research methods for decades. She is also the most eminent scholar of single life. If you are willing to examine beliefs that perhaps you have never questioned before, and think hard as you consider challenging arguments, read this book.
Professor Bella DePaulo (Ph.D, Harvard) has been busting myths about marriage and single life ever since her groundbreaking book, Singled Out. In Marriage vs. Single Life, she makes her case more forcefully, thoroughly, and persuasively than ever before. The first two chapters, "Living Single: Lightening up those dark, dopey myths" and "Why no study has ever shown that getting married makes people happier or healthier – and no study ever will," were originally written for fellow scholars. The other 39 chapters are shorter and more accessible. Many were popular posts at her Living Single blog at Psychology Today or her Single at Heart blog at Psych Central. Dr. DePaulo's joyful and unapologetic take on single life is firmly grounded in her research. Her voice is unique. No one else writes about single life the way she does. Whether you are an eminent social scientist or a smart layperson sick of all the mindless matrimania in contemporary society, this book is for you. From the author: For nearly 2 decades, I have been arguing that research does not support the pervasive claims that getting married makes people happier or healthier. As a social scientist, I care about the accuracy of claims about research findings. But when it comes to proclamations about marriage and single life, the issues are not just academic. Real single people – over 100 million of them in the U.S. alone – are getting the message that science has shown that their lives are second rate. It hasn't and they aren't. In the past few years, several important studies and review papers have been published that make it clearer than it has ever been before that we have been misled about the supposed benefits of getting married. I have discussed those publications in several of the brief chapters in this book, many of which were posts that first appeared on my "Living Single" blog at Psychology Today or my "Single at Heart" blog at Psych Central.The most important chapter, I think, is Chapter 2, "No study has ever shown that getting married makes people happier or healthier – and no study ever will." In it, I make the case more thoroughly and forcefully than ever before. In fact, I think that chapter is so significant that I have published it as a stand-alone book, The Science of Marriage: What We Know That Just Isn't So. The first chapter in this book, "Living single: Lightening up those dark, dopey myths," is a broad-ranging discussion of the psychology of single life. In it, I challenge the pervasive claims about the benefits of marriage, but that is just a part of the discussion. The chapter originally appeared in Cupach and Spitzer's edited volume, The Dark Side of Personal Relationships II. As with most academic volumes, it is very expensive. Now interested readers can access my chapter in this much more affordable book. Part I of Marriage vs. Single Life: How Science and the Media Got It So Wrong includes just those two substantial chapters. The second chapter was originally written for fellow academics and some sections are fairly detailed. Part II begins with Chapter 3, a briefer and more accessible version of the same arguments from Chapter 2. The chapters, 3 through 19, are about "Getting it right." I've subtitled that section, "On getting married and not getting happier or healthier or more connected and not getting to live longer: What the research really does show and why." Part III, chapters 20 through 36, are about "Getting it wrong." The short chapters are critiques of dubious claims about getting married and getting happier and healthier. Finally, in Part IV, chapters 37 through 41, I take a step back to try to account for all the misinformation about marriage and single life. I also offer some suggestions for getting it right in the future.
People who are single are changing the face of America. Did you know that: * More than 40 percent of the nation's adults---over 87 million people---are divorced, widowed, or have always been single. * There are more households comprised of single people living alone than of married parents and their children. * Americans now spend more of their adult years single than married. Many of today's single people have engaging jobs, homes that they own, and a network of friends. This is not the 1950s---singles can have sex without marrying, and they can raise smart, successful, and happy children. It should be a great time to be single. Yet too often single people are still asked to defend their single status by an onslaught of judgmental peers and fretful relatives. Prominent people in politics, the popular press, and the intelligentsia have all taken turns peddling myths about marriage and singlehood. Marry, they promise, and you will live a long, happy, and healthy life, and you will never be lonely again. Drawing from decades of scientific research and stacks of stories from the front lines of singlehood, Bella DePaulo debunks the myths of singledom---and shows that just about everything you've heard about the benefits of getting married and the perils of staying single are grossly exaggerated or just plain wrong. Although singles are singled out for unfair treatment by the workplace, the marketplace, and the federal tax structure, they are not simply victims of this singlism. Single people really are living happily ever after. Filled with bracing bursts of truth and dazzling dashes of humor, Singled Out is a spirited and provocative read for the single, the married, and everyone in between. You will never think about singlehood or marriage the same way again. Singled Out debunks the Ten Myths of Singlehood, including: Myth #1: The Wonder of Couples: Marrieds know best. Myth #3: The Dark Aura of Singlehood: You are miserable and lonely and your life is tragic. Myth #5: Attention, Single Women: Your work won't love you back and your eggs will dry up. Also, you don't get any and you're promiscuous. Myth #6: Attention, Single Men: You are horny, slovenly, and irresponsible, and you are the scary criminals. Or you are sexy, fastidious, frivolous, and gay. Myth #7: Attention, Single Parents: Your kids are doomed. Myth #9: Poor Soul: You will grow old alone and you will die in a room by yourself where no one will find you for weeks. Myth #10: Family Values: Let's give all of the perks, benefits, gifts, and cash to couples and call it family values. "With elegant analysis, wonderfully detailed examples, and clear and witty prose, DePaulo lays out the many, often subtle denigrations and discriminations faced by single adults in the U.S. She addresses, too, the resilience of single women and men in the face of such singlism. A must-read for all single adults, their friends and families, as well as social scientists and policy advocates." ---E. Kay Trimberger, author of The New Single Woman
Most people value honesty. They want to tell the truth. They also value kindness. Sometimes, though, honesty and kindness collide. That happens when telling the truth would be hurtful, but being kind involves telling a lie. How do people negotiate this clash of noble intentions? When the Truth Hurts: Lying to Be Kind is a brief book with two parts. Part 1 is adapted from this chapter: DePaulo, Bella M., Morris, Wendy L., & Sternglanz, R. Weylin (2009). When the truth hurts: Deception in the name of kindness. In Anita L. Vangelisti (Ed.), Feeling hurt in close relationships (pp. 167-190). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In Part 2, questions that various reporters have asked Professor DePaulo over the years are collected and answered. Professor Bella DePaulo is an award-winning social scientist and Harvard Ph.D. who has been studying the psychology of deceiving and detecting deceit for decades. She is one of the most renowned scholars in the field. Dr. DePaulo's previous books on deception include Behind the Door of Deceit, The Hows and Whys of Lies, The Lies We Tell and the Clues We Miss, Is Anyone Really Good at Detecting Lies (with Charles F. Bond, Jr.), and The Psychology of Dexter. Bella DePaulo is also an expert on single life and has published Singled Out, Single with Attitude, and Singlism.
For years, Bella DePaulo (Ph.D., Harvard) asked ordinary people to tell her research team about the most serious lies they had ever told, and about the most serious lies that were ever told to them. One after another, they opened up, describing lies about love and sex, cheating and shoplifting, illness and abuse, kinship and adoption, achievements and resources. They told about lies that resulted in the loss of relationships, reputations, and large sums of money. They even described lies that proved deadly. Some admitted to living a lie. Although there was much pain in their accounts, there were also evidence of some remarkable resilience. There are lessons from these hundreds of stories of major deceptions. Dr. DePaulo shares tips for avoiding the temptation to tell serious lies, and explains why some of the most unlikely people can be vulnerable to getting duped.
Award-winning social scientist and Harvard Ph.D. Bella DePaulo has been studying the psychology of deceiving and detecting deceit for decades. The Lies We Tell and the Clues We Miss is a collection of six of her most influential professional papers: 1. Lying in Everyday Life. 2. Who Lies? 3. Everyday Lies in Close and Casual Relationships 4. Truth and Investment: Lies Are Told to Those Who Care 5. Nonverbal Behavior and Self-Presentation 6. Cues to Deception The papers are the original reports of research and theory widely cited in other scholarly papers as well as in the national media.
Award-winning social scientist, Harvard Ph.D., and acclaimed author of "Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After," Bella DePaulo turns her attention in this collection to one of the most significant and underappreciated relationships in our lives - friendship. She finds, for example, that: Two friends look at the same facial expression and interpret it the same way - if they are women. Over time, two friends can spot each other's lies more accurately - but only if they are emotionally close. Sometimes one friend does not want the other to notice feelings of sadness or anger - then the closer friends are actually less likely to recognize that distress than the less close friends. Ordinarily, though, friends are more likely to know the truth about each other than are strangers, and that's because friends less often lie to each other in their everyday lives. Those discoveries and more are described in the five articles in this collection. All were originally published in scholarly journals. 1.Similarities between Friends in their Understanding of Nonverbal Cues 2.Familiarity Effects in Nonverbal Understanding: Recognizing Our Own Facial Expressions and Our Friends' 3.Reading Nonverbal Cues to Emotions: The Advantages and Liabilities of Relationship Closeness 4.Everyday Lies in Close and Casual Relationships 5.The Development of Deception Detection Skill: A Longitudinal Study of Same-Sex Friends
The savvy lie-detector has become a staple of popular culture. Human lie detectors, in the papers collected here, are those who skillfully separate truths from lies when observing or interacting with another person - and they do it using just what they can see or hear. It is not just in the media that the legend of the impressive human lie detector thrives - some scholars have endorsed the notion, too. But is it really so? Ph.D. social psychologists Charles F. Bond Jr. and Bella DePaulo have been studying the psychology of deceiving and detecting deceit for decades. In this anthology, they toss some empirically-grounded skepticism at claims about humans' abilities to tell when other people are lying. The journal articles address questions such as the following:1. Maybe ordinary people aren't so great at detecting lies, but don't they get more insightful over time as they get to know someone better?2. What about people who try to detect lies as part of their jobs - and have done so for years: Are they especially successful at knowing when other people are lying?3. Are there some people who are so talented at detecting lies that they deserve to be called lie-detection wizards?4. Are there times when other people strike us as dishonest even when they are telling the truth? When might that happen?5. Suppose we examine every study that has ever been reported on skill at distinguishing lies from truths: What would that lead us to conclude about the human ability to detect lies? 6. Now suppose we scrutinize every available study for evidence of individual differences in the ability to detect lies: Will we find that some people are great and others are awful? Or will we find that some people consistently just look more honest than others, regardless of whether they are lying or telling the truth?
A noted social psychologist exposes a widespread cultural bias against unmarried adults, showing how singles are stereotyped, stigmatized, and ignored, and yet can still live happily ever after.
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