Advice to the lovelorn: You will survive - study

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:15:56 GMT

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A couple stands at the embankment of the Volga River in Samara, about 1000 km southeast of Moscow in this May 18, 2007 file photo. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Despite the laments of pining pop stars and sad sack poets, U.S. researchers now think breaking up may not be so hard to do.

"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, it is just less bad than you thought."

親愛的,分手並非那麼痛--研究報告

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 08:12:23 GMT

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流行歌星以痛徹心扉的歌曲、詩人用悲傷的詞句悼念逝去的戀 情，但根據美國研究人員的最新發現，分手也許並不是那麼難。「我們低估了自己面對失戀心碎的能力，」西北大學心理系助理教授芬克爾表示。圖為8月19日的 中國七夕情人節，一對情侶在台北街頭留影。 路透/Nicky Loh (發稿:李婷儀/李中慶)

路透芝加哥電---流行歌星以痛徹心扉的歌曲、詩人用悲傷的詞句悼念逝去的戀情，但根據美國研究人員的最新發現，分手也許並不是那麼難。

「我們低估了自己面對失戀心碎的能力，」西北大學心理系助理教授芬克爾表示。這項研究報告發表在《Experimental Social Psychology》線上期刊中。

　芬克爾與同僚以年輕戀人為研究對象--尤其是自稱經歷如火星撞地球般戀情的情侶--看看他們預想自己失戀的反應，是否和真正面臨愛情破滅時的痛苦相吻合。

「平均而言，人們高估了失戀後的打擊，」芬克爾接受電話採訪時表示。

參與這一歷時九個月研究的是至少已和戀人約會兩個月的大學生，他們每兩週填一次問卷。研究者從26人的回答蒐集數據，這當中包括10名女子和16名男子，他們在研究開始後六個月內就與情人分道揚鑣。

研究人員把這群失戀陣線在分手後所記錄下的真實感覺分成四個時間階段，並與他們在分手前兩週所預言的失戀痛苦相比較。

毫不意外地，愛得愈深、痛得愈深。但是芬克爾說：「他們想像中對於痛苦程度的認知，和實際情況相比戲劇性地誇張許多，…無論如何，分手沒有你想得那麼糟。」(完)