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Divorce Rate Cut in Half for Couples Who Discussed Relationship Movies

January 31, 2014
Contact: Susan Hagen susan.hagen@rochester.edu
585.276.4061

A new study finds that watching and discussing movies about relationships is as effective in lowering divorce rates as other, more intensive early marriage counseling programs.




Discussing five movies about relationships over a month could cut the three-year divorce rate for newlyweds in half, researchers report. The study, involving 174 couples, is the first long-term investigation to compare different types of early marriage intervention programs.

The findings show that an inexpensive, fun, and relatively simple movie-and-talk approach can be just as effective as other more intensive therapist-led methods—reducing the divorce or separation rate from 24 to 11 percent after three years.


En español: La tasa de divorcio se reduce a la mitad entre recién casados que comentaron cinco películas sobre relaciones de pareja


Making Headlines

New York Times
Movie Date Night Can Double as Therapy
(February 10, 2014)

USA Today
Party of Four? A Double Date Can Rev Up Your Romance
(February 10, 2014)

ABC News (Good Morning America)
Can RomComs Save a Marriage?
(February 4, 2014)

England Telegraph
Rom coms could save your marriage
(February 2, 2014)

"We thought the movie treatment would help, but not nearly as much as the other programs in which we were teaching all of these state-of-the-art skills," said Ronald Rogge, associate professor of psychology at the University of Rochester and lead author of the study. "The results suggest that husbands and wives have a pretty good sense of what they might be doing right and wrong in their relationships. Thus, you might not need to teach them a whole lot of skills to cut the divorce rate. You might just need to get them to think about how they are currently behaving. And for five movies to give us a benefit over three years—that is awesome."

Perhaps most exciting, added Rogge, is that this self-help exercise could open new possibilities for nurturing nuptial ties on a broad scale. "It's incredibly portable. There are really great marriage intervention programs available now but most require trained therapists to administer them. If couples can do this on their own, it makes it so much easier to help them," he said.

portrait of Ronald Rogge

Ronald Rogge, associate professor of psychology

Rogge and a team of researchers including co-author Thomas Bradbury, a professor of psychology and co-director of the Relationship Institute at UCLA, published the findings in the December issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

Religious groups have long-standing traditions of offering marriage preparation classes, but with roughly half of all marriages in the United State ending in divorce, secular institutions are now joining the effort. For example, Fairfax County, Va. offers free "compassion training" to newlyweds, the U.S. military has an "oxygen for your relationships" program, and Oklahoma, home to the nation's highest divorce rate, has poured millions into its "marriage initiative."

An underpinning of many of these programs, backed by earlier research, is that couples will weather the friction of living together better if they can master certain relationship skills. "When we started this study, the prevailing wisdom was that the best way to keep relationships healthy and strong was to help couples manage difficult, potentially divisive conversations," explained Bradbury.

To test this theory, the team randomly assigned newlyweds to one of three groups: conflict management, compassion and acceptance training, and relationship awareness through film. They chose to concentrate on the first three years of marriage, because "relationship dissolution is front-ended," said Bradbury; one in four ends in divorce.

The conflict management group learned a technique for discussing heated issues that slows down the pace of the exchange and helps individuals focus on what their partner is saying instead of rushing to respond. Sometimes called active listening or the speaker-listener technique, the practice requires one spouse to listen and then paraphrase back to the partner what they have heard to ensure the message has been properly understood. Earlier studies on this technique have shown it to be effective at promoting happier and more satisfying relationships over three to five years.

The compassion and acceptance training cohort participated in an intervention designed by Rogge and his collaborators aimed at helping couples work together as a team and find common ground around their similarities. Couples were encouraged through a series of lectures and exercises to approach their relationships with more compassion and empathy by doing things like listening as a friend, practicing random acts of kindness and affection, and using the language of acceptance.

"It's incredibly portable. There are really great marriage intervention programs available now but most require trained therapists to administer them. If couples can do this on their own, it makes it so much easier to help them."
—Ronald Rogge

Both programs involved weekly lectures, supervised practice sessions, and homework assignments over the course of a month, for a total investment of roughly 20 hours, all but two of which were with a therapist.

By contrast, the movie-and-talk group devoted half as much time to their assignments and all but four hours took place in their own homes. Participants first attended a 10-minute lecture on the importance of relationship awareness and how watching couples in movies could help spouses pay attention to their own behavior, both constructive and destructive.

They then watched Two for the Road, a 1967 romantic comedy about the joys and strains of young love, infidelity, and professional pressures across 12 years of a marriage. Afterward, each couple met separately to discuss a list of 12 questions about the screen couple's interactions. One question, for example, asked how the movie partners handled arguments: "Were they able to open up and tell each other how they really felt, or did they tend to just snap at each other with anger? Did they try using humor to keep things from getting nasty?" The couple was asked to consider in what way the movie relationship was "similar to or different from your own relationship in this area?"

Study participants were sent home with a list of 47 movies with intimate relationships as a major plot focus and asked to watch one a week for the next month, followed by the same guided discussion for about 45 minutes.

Which approach proved most effective? To the surprise of the researchers, all worked equally well. All three methods halved the divorce-and-separation rate to 11 percent compared to the 24 percent rate among the couples in the control group. Partners in the control group received no training or instructions but were otherwise similar in age, education, ethnicity, relationship satisfaction, and other dimensions.

Discussing relationship movies, it turns outs, was just as effective as more intensive skills-building programs. The results suggest that many couples already possess relationship skills, they just need reminders to put these into practice, the authors conclude. "And that's an amazingly fertile idea. It's more sensible and it's cheaper," said Bradbury.

Since people watch movies all the time, what exactly makes this intervention so magic? "I think it's the couples reinvesting in their relationship and taking a cold hard look at their own behavior that makes the difference," explained Rogge. "The sad truth is that when life knocks you down, you come home and the people you are most likely to lash out at in frustration are the ones you love the most. For these couples to stop and look and say, 'You know, I have yelled at you like that before. I have called you names before and that's not nice. That's not what I want to do to the person I love the most.' Just that insight alone, is likely what makes this intervention work."

For couples who are uncomfortable with relationship workshops and group interventions, the movie-and-talk approach can be an alternative. "You might not be able to get your husband into a couples group, especially when you are happy," said Rogge. "But watching a movie together and having a discussion, that's not so scary. It's less pathologizing, less stigmatizing."

Since some of the newlyweds in the study had been together for as many as seven years, Rogge speculated that the movie method would be helpful for long-term marriages as well. "Taking time to sit down and take an objective look at your relationship with your partner is going to be helpful for any couple at any stage. They can make it a yearly thing they do around their anniversary—watch a movie together and talk about it. That would be a fantastic thing to do and a great present to give themselves each year."

For couples interested in trying the film discussions for themselves, Rogge's lab website (www.couples-research.com) offers interactive tools to help with the process, including lists of movies and the discussion questions used. Couples can also sign up to participate in a follow-up online study of the movie-and-talk intervention at the site.

Rebecca Cobb from Simon Frasier University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada, Erika Lawrence from the University of Iowa, and Matthew Johnson from Binghamton University also contributed to this study. The research was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation awarded to Bradbury.

The Movies

screenshot of PDF says What Is Your Love Story?

The movies used in this study are listed below, followed by a list of newer movies that can also be used in this exercise.

Download and print the movie lists and guided discussion questions


Movies from the study

A Star Is Born (1954)
Judy Garland and James Mason

Adam's Rib (1949)
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn

Anna Karenina (2012)
Keira Knightley and Jude Law

As Good as it Gets (1997)
Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt

Barefoot in the Park (1967)
Robert Redford and Jane Fonda

Children of a Lesser God (1986)
William Hurt and Marlee Matlin

Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick

Desk Set (1957)
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn

Dying Young (1991)
Julia Roberts and Campbell Scott

Fools Rush In (1997)
Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek

Forget Paris (1995)
Billy Crystal and Debra Winger

French Twist (1995)
Patrick Aubrée and Josiane Balasko

Funny Girl (1968)
Barbra Streisand and Omar Sharif

Gone With the Wind (1939)
Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier

Hanover Street (1979)
Harrison Ford and Lesley-Anne Down

Husbands and Wives (1992)
Woody Allen and Mia Farrow

Indecent Proposal (1993)
Robert Redford and Demi Moore

Jungle Fever (1991)
Wesley Snipes and Anna Sciorra

Love Jones (1997)
Larenz Tate and Nia Long

Love Story (1970)
Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal

Made for Each Other (1939)
Carole Lombard and James Stewart

Mississippi Masala (1991)
Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury

Move Over, Darling (1963)
Doris Day and James Garner

Mr. Blandings Builds his Dreamhouse (1948)
Cary Grant and Myrna Loy

My Favorite Wife (1940)
Irene Dunne and Cary Grant

Nina Takes a Lover (1994)
Laura San Giacomo and Paul Rhys

Nine Months (1995)
Hugh Grant and Julianne Moore

On Golden Pond (1981)
Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda

Pat and Mike (1952)
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn

Penny Serenade (1941)
Cary Grant and Irene Dunne

Phffft [Pfft!] (1954)
Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon

Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker (1994)
Jing Ning and Gang Wu

She's Having a Baby (1988)
Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern

Steel Magnolias (1989)
Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis

Terms of Endearment (1983)
Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger

The Devil's Advocate (1997)
Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino

The Egg and I (1947)
Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray

The Male Animal (1942)
Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland

The Out of Towners (1999)
Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn

The Thin Man (1934)
William Powell and Myrna Loy

The Way We Were (1973)
Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford

Untamed Heart (1993)
Christian Slater and Marisa Tomei

When a Man Loves a Woman (1994)
Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

With Six You Get Eggroll (1968)
Doris Day and Brian Keith

Yours, Mine and Ours (2005)
Dennis Quaid and Renne Russo


Complete list of movies, with new movies to try