Suppose you read about a study comparing single people to coupled people and supposedly showing that single people are deficient and romantically coupled people are the winners? I’ll start with a hypothetical and then show how it applies to the kinds of studies you really do read about.

In the hypothetical study, the researchers want to know who is better at getting out of boxes, single people or coupled people. A single person starts in one box, and the couple starts in a box right beside the single person. The whistle is blown, and the participants try to get out of their boxes. The researchers are timing them.

They find that the coupled people get out of their boxes more quickly, maybe much more quickly. They publish their study and say that it shows that single people are deficient at getting out of boxes. Maybe it’s a psychological thing, and they should get counseling or therapy. The coupled people, in contrast, have great box-escaping skills. They have no deficiencies that the researchers mention and nothing to work on.

The study gets a lot of attention in the media. Coupled people feel proud of themselves. Single people feel bad because social scientists have shown that they have a box-escaping deficiency, and maybe they should go into therapy to work on whatever is at the root of their problem. What’s more, because of all the media coverage, people everywhere are learning about their deficiency and couples’ superiority.

The researchers think it is fine to tell you only about the time it took each participant to get out of the box. After all, it is a study of box-escaping skill.

Often, there is a highly relevant context to the story that is not mentioned. In my hypothetical example, it looks like this: The single person is in the box on the left. The door is shut, and there are boulders in front of it. The top of the box is taped shut.

The coupled people are in a box that has no door,........

© Psychology Today