单选题
Whatever else went wrong in the world this year, no one can complain about a shortage of celebrity breakups. From Jennifer Aniston"s split with Brad Pitt in January to Jessica Simpson"s divorce from Nick Lachey in December, 2005 was filled with ruined romance. But hold the tears—at least for the ex-wives. Bad marriages might have been making them sick. Researchers say that long-term anger and hostility between partners is much more dangerous for women than men and can impair our immune system and put us at risk for depression, high blood pressure and even heart disease.
In a study published in the current issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and her colleagues at Ohio State University recruited 42 healthy couples who had been married an average of 12 years to spend two 24-hour stretches in a hospital research unit. On the first visit, the couples were encouraged to be loving and supportive of each other. On the second visit, they talked about their areas of conflict. On each visit, a special vacuum tube created blister wounds on their arms that were monitored for healing. The most hostile couples took an average of a day longer to heal. "Hostile marital interactions really enhance production of stress hormones, especially for women," Kiecolt-Glaser says. "And immune change is greater for women than for men."
What makes women so vulnerable to a husband"s hostility? Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychiatry and psychology, says women remember both positive and negative interactions more than men because they"re generally more aware of the emotional content of a relationship. Women have larger and broader social networks than men, she says, and they"re more sensitive to "adverse events" in their networks—a friend, a child, or a sister in trouble. That sensitivity is especially acute when it comes to their most intimate relationship, with their husband. A common laboratory strategy for studying marriage, Kiecolt-Glaser says, is to watch couples talk about a disagreement and then have each partner rate their own and their spouse"s behavior. "Women"s ratings of the behavior are much closer to the outside observer"s codings of hostility than men"s," she says. "Men simply don"t see it."
Long-term unhappy marriages have serious health consequences. In another study published earlier this year in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and San Diego State University looked at data from more than 400 healthy women who were followed for 13 years before and after menopause. They found that marital dissatisfaction tripled a woman"s chances of having metabolic syndrome, a group of heart-risk factors. Only widows were more likely to have metabolic syndrome than the unhappy wives; even divorced and single women had better health-risk profiles.
What should you take away from all this? Kiecolt-Glaser says couples should learn to keep hostility in check. "When relationships are stressed," she says, "you see a "tit for tat" kind of behavior where things really escalate. The most important thing is to cut that off early."
单选题
The marital status of the celebrities is mentioned in the beginning to show ______