Is it time to buy new furniture?
Well, here's a compelling argument to upgrade your Ikea furniture: Recent research published in Psychological Science suggests that using unstable chairs and tables may affect how you see your relationship—for the worse.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Waterloo asked 54 college students in serious relationships to use chairs and tables that were either structurally sound or ever-so-slightly wobbly. Then they gave the subjects questionnaires that asked about relationship satisfaction—and the people who'd used the unstable furniture rated their bonds as less secure.
Another experiment in the same study yielded similar results: When researchers asked 174 people in monogamous relationships to either stand on one leg or on two, those who'd been made to stand on one foot reported having rockier relationships. They also composed less loving letters to their S.O.s when they were asked to write them a note.
A third test seems to further confirm the theory that your physical surroundings can affect how you see your relationship. One hundred twenty-nine college students were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one that sat in chairs with concealed inflatable discs that made it difficult to sit in a stable position, and one that sat in chairs that were more solid. Surprise, surprise: The people in the latter group expressed higher levels of relationship satisfaction.
Although the study authors don't indicate that physical instability willresult in an unstable union, this certainly suggests that it may affect your perception of your partnership, which is one important aspect of the emerging field of embodied cognition—the way our physiology and the environment interacts with our thoughts and feelings.
So the next time you're trying to think about how solid your relationship is, make sure you're standing (or sitting) on solid ground first.
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