Sirbomber is right. There is no benefit to researching rec. centers.
It's like taking a pie, and slicing it up into more pieces that are now smaller. The size of the pie doesn't change. You're overall morale will be the same, provided you meet demand for everything. In fact, it's detrimental to research those buildings, because demand will NOT be met between the time the research completes, and you'd built a kit, or rather a sufficient number of kits, and deployed them. The only use, is if for some reason you can not maintain another aspect of colony morale, and you need the minus from that other aspect to now account for a smaller percentage of your overall morale. Maybe in custom scenarios that might be the case, but in usual practice, if another aspect is bringing morale down, you should fix that rather than attempt a partial fix by distracting your colonists with rec. centers.
My conclusion is, never research rec. centers, if you can possibly avoid it.
The only time you should research morale affecting techs is if they're required to finish the mission (campaign?), or if you're using a tech tree where another tech you want depends on that tech (like the GORF, which affects morale, and later on better metals processing). Or if you've come to the end of a colony game, and feel some sort of requirement to complete every research, and you're not worried about the negative consequences.
