A new study, published in the journal Science, examined the subconscious feelings newlyweds have about their marriage.  Specifically, the researchers collected information about the explicit, conscious feelings and attitudes they had about their marriage every 6 months for 4 years.  They also collected information about automatic thoughts, or subconscious feelings and attitudes.  Researchers found that there was no correlation between the two sets of data, meaning that their subconscious thoughts may be in conflict about their conscious thoughts on the satisfaction in their marriage.  Seattle Times reports that the conflict of thoughts in newlyweds may come from the pressure for newlyweds to express marital bliss and ecstatic feelings.

They study also noted that it was the subconscious feelings that the married people had that indicated their marital satisfaction.  If individuals could alter their automatic thoughts to be more positive, they would see a lower decline in marital satisfaction over time.  According to Social Science Medley, automatic thoughts are unconscious or subconscious, involuntary, unintentional, and effortless.  Automatic thinking makes up a significant portion of individual decision-making even if the decisions made as a result of it are not rational or ideal.

Automatic processes can aid in self-destructive behavior.  They provide a coping mechanism for dealing with overwhelming feelings.  Psychologists find that automatic thoughts are often at play in addiction disorders.  Similarly, individuals brought up in a drug-free household are less likely to succumb to addiction because their aversion to substance use is involuntary and effortless.  Changes would need to be made to the automatic processes in order to see a change to addiction or aversion to it.

An earlier study, published in the journal Emotion, found that emotional regulation in marital relationships corresponded with marital satisfaction.  Specifically, when couples argue, the sooner the female partner calms down, the better an indication of marital satisfaction for both partners.  Regulating negative emotions, perhaps through automatic processes, can be beneficial for the marriage.  However, creating meaningful change to automatic processes is can be challenging.

Common statistics state that half of marriages end in divorce.  However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that the rate is actually lower than that.  In 2011, for example, there were over 2.1 million marriages.  In contrast, there under 900 thousand divorces in the same year.  There are similar trends in previous years, with over 2 million marriages each year and around 900 thousand divorces.  If people could control automatic processes, these trends may decline.