Science Proves Game

It is better to be right than to be happy – at least for one husband on the cutting edge of science.

 As part of an unusual experiment, the husband was instructed to “agree with his wife’s every opinion and request without complaint,” and to continue doing so “even if he believed the female participant was wrong,” according to a report on the research that was published Tuesday by the British Medical Journal.

The husband and wife were helping a trio of doctors test their theory that pride and stubbornness get in the way of good mental health. In their own medical practices in New Zealand, they had observed patients leading “unnecessarily stressful lives by wanting to be right rather than happy.” If these patients could just let go of the need to prove to others that they were right, would greater happiness be the result?

Enter the intrepid husband. Based on the assumption that men would rather be happy than be right, he was told to agree with his wife in all cases. However, based on the assumption that women would rather be right than be happy, the doctors decided not to tell the wife why her husband was suddenly so agreeable.

It’s not clear how long the experiment was intended to last, but it came to an abrupt halt on Day 12.

“By then the male participant found the female participant to be increasingly critical of everything he did,” the researchers reported. The husband couldn’t take it anymore, so he made his wife a cup of tea and told her what had been going on.

That led the researchers to terminate the study.

Over the 12 days of the experiment, the husband’s quality of life plummeted from a baseline score of 7 all the way down to 3. The wife started out at 8 and rose to 8.5 by Day 6. She had no desire to share her quality of life with the researchers on Day 12, according to the report.

Still, the team was able to draw some preliminary conclusions.

They also noted that “the availability of unbridled power adversely affects the quality of life of those on the receiving end.”

Let's break it down:

They thought that agreeing with the wife would make her, and thus, by association him, happy.

What really happened is it turned her into such a raving bitch that he couldn't take it any more.

Thus ended "a scientific" study.

Here it is America:  Women in positions of power abuse that power.  It doesn't matter if she is your mother, your girlfriend, your wife, your daughter or your boss.  If she thinks she has the upper hand in the relationship she will abuse it.  In this "study" the women was given the tiny tiniest bit of unwarranted superiority.  She probably didn't even know what had changed in the relationship.   In the quaint views of the researchers: “the availability of unbridled power adversely affects the quality of life of those on the receiving end.”

That as any overly mothered male child, hen pecked husband or fool working for a female boss will tell you, is an understatement.