Source: Breaking Up Aint’ Hard To Do. (OR Why Psychology Is A Soft Science): Inky Circus:
Breaking Up Aint’ Hard To Do. (OR Why Psychology Is A Soft Science)
(PHOTO: Walter Groesel)
Check out this story about a study on the predicted and then actual emotional distress suffered from relationship break-up published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The authors conclude that people are far more scared of the heart ache, and estimate it will be cataclysmic, but after following 69 people for about a year, they found that the break up was never as bad as they expected. Nice.
Only caveat being: these were UNIVERSITY FRESHMEN. Are you kidding? I mean seriously. Of course they think it’s going to be horrible – they are melodramatic teenagers living without parents and in close quarters to the opposite sex and mucho beer for the first time in their lives. And of course they aren’t really that upset because they probably started seeing someone else in like 12 minutes.
Undergrads are the bread and butter of psych research, and most times that’s okay. But come on. You want to generalize about relationship behavior from people who think making out at a kegger on a puke-stained sofa is the start of something beautiful?
This is why their blog is quickly becoming one of my favorites.
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