Are Married men, nicer men? This study answers that question.

Okay, the Tiger Woods pic shows that there ARE exceptions to every rule (except the rule that “there are exceptions to every rule”).  

But by “nicer”, I don’t mean just chasing women around at the neighborhood HOOTER’S; I mean the lack of antisocial personality traits, such as criminal behavior, lying, aggression, and lack of remorse.  

What’s the cause and what’s the effect? Are nicer men just more likely to GET married? Or is it that, once they are married and, in women’s words, “trained”, that they BECOME nicer?  

The answer: 

A little bit of both, according to the study author Dr. S. Alexandra Burt at Michigan State University. Married men “are just not as antisocial to begin with,” she said. “And when they get married, they get even less antisocial. So both things are going on.”

In their study, they followed 289 pairs of male twins for 12 years, between the ages of 17 and 29. More than half of the twins were identical, meaning they shared all the same genes and childhood environment.

The authors found that men who eventually married — about 60 percent of them — showed less antisocial behavior at ages 17 and 20, suggesting that nicer men are more likely to be marriage-worthy in the first place. 

However, among these identical twins in which one was married and one wasn’t, the married twin had fewer antisocial behaviors after the union than the unmarried twin. Same genes, same environment; but the married twin behaved better. These findings indicate that marriage helped weed out those bad behaviors.

“Not everyone is equally likely to enter the institution of marriage,” King said. “But those that do enter into it get some benefit from it.”