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Improving Personal Happiness Through Couple Intervention: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Self-directed Couple Enhancement Program

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Abstract

Although personal happiness is highly associated with social relationships, basic questions remain regarding the causal effect of improved social relationships on happiness. The main aim of this study was to test whether emotional and cognitive dimensions of personal happiness can be increased by means of a self-directed relationship enhancement program, which aims to increase relationship-relevant skills such as dyadic coping, communication, and conflict resolution. N = 220 couples were randomly assigned either to an intervention or to a waiting list control group (survey: pre-, post-, 3- and 6-month follow-ups). Multi-group latent change score models reveal that (1) personal happiness can be increased through a couple intervention; (2) change in personal happiness was predicted by an increase in skills and relationship satisfaction through the intervention; (3) the least happy participants benefited most from the intervention. Improving spousal interactions may help people become and stay happier. Participants in this study did not relapse to their set point of personal happiness as could be expected by adaptation theory. Thus, not treating individuals directly, but rather the dynamic system of spousal interactions as a whole, offers a potentially very powerful area for happiness research.

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Notes

  1. Though one articles has been published with this data set (Bodenmann et al. 2014), the current study is the only article to examine the effect of a self-directed couple intervention on individual happiness. Bodenmann et al. (2014) did examine the efficacy and effectiveness of the self-directed prevention program on dyadic outcomes.

  2. This study is part of a larger study with a total of 330 couples (Bodenmann et al. 2014). In the larger study there were two experimental groups: (1) DVD group without any further support, and (2) a DVD group with technical telephone coaching. The experimental group with additional technical telephone coaching was excluded, because including an additional experimental group would increase the complexity of the study (e.g., differences in procedures, unwanted comparison of technical support versus self-directed, complexity of analyses). Because the main aim of the current study was to test a fully self-directed couple distress prevention program, which could potentially be disseminated online, we included the fully self-directed group with no further support.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (NCCR Sesam).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, 1100 NE 45th, Suite 300, Office 346, Box 354944, Seattle, WA, 98195-4944, USA

    Peter Hilpert

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Guy Bodenmann

  3. Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

    Fridtjof W. Nussbeck

  4. Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Thomas N. Bradbury

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  1. Peter Hilpert
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Correspondence to Peter Hilpert.

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Hilpert, P., Bodenmann, G., Nussbeck, F.W. et al. Improving Personal Happiness Through Couple Intervention: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Self-directed Couple Enhancement Program. J Happiness Stud 17, 213–237 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-014-9591-7

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