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WORLD / Health
Lovelorn, you will survive
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-08-21 09:22
CHICAGO -- Despite the laments of pining pop stars and sad sack poets, US
researchers now think breaking up may not be so hard to do.
A young couple is seen in Moscow in this undated photo. Despite the
laments of pining pop stars and sad sack poets, US researchers now think
breaking up may not be so hard to do. [Reuters]
"We underestimate our ability to survive heartbreak," said Eli Finkel, an
assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University, whose study
appears online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Finkel and colleague Paul Eastwick studied young lovers -- especially
those who profess ardent affection -- to see if their predictions of
devastation matched their actual angst when that love was lost.
"On average, people overestimate how distressed they will be following a
breakup," Finkel said in a telephone interview.
The nine-month study involved college students who had been dating at
least two months who filled out questionnaires every two weeks. They
gathered data from 26 people -- 10 women and 16 men -- who broke up with
their partners during the first six months of the study.
The participants' forecasts of distress two weeks before the breakup were
compared to their actual experience as recorded over four different
periods of time.
Not surprisingly, they found the more people were in love, the harder
they took the breakup.
"People who are more in love really are a little more upset after a
breakup, but their perceptions about how distraught they will be are
dramatically overstated when compared to reality," Finkel said.
"At the end of the day, it is just less bad than you thought."
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