In 1993, Lisa Holst wrote an article about how easy it is to spread a hoax on the Internet and gave as an example an absurd statistical figure: thateach person accidentally swallows eight spiders a year, usually while sleeping. The surprising thing is that that idea that Holst criticized became a myth that still circulates today.
Whatsingles have better sex than married people is another false beliefquite popular. The latest studies and surveys suggest that around 40% of married people have sex twice a week, compared to only 20% of single people. And 40% of married women feel sexually satisfied compared to 30% of those who do not have a stable partner. If to this we add that happily matched people have fewer hypertension problems, according to a study in the journalAnnals of Behavioral Medicine, and that those who have never been married have a higher risk of premature death, statistically everything indicates that marriage suits us quite well.
Thesuicides do not increase during the Christmas holidays, as we usually think. It’s more,December is the month with the least suicides, as demonstrated by a British study published a few years ago in the journalPsychiatry Research. The highest figures for self-inflicted deaths coincide with spring and summer.
When we turn fifty we are not any more unhappy, quite the opposite. According to a study published in PNAS, adults over half a century of life are generally happier, experience less stress, and worry less than those in their twenties. According to Arthur Stone, a psychologist at Stony Brook University in New York (USA).Anger and stress progressively descend from youth to maturity, while happiness and the ability to have fun increase when we turn half a century. As for concerns, they remain fairly constant until age 50, at which point they begin to decline. In short, the crisis of the fifties is another myth.
