An experimental, multi-day protocol exposed volunteers to either sudden silence (ghosting), explicit refusal (rejection), or a control conversation to measure emotional consequences. Forty-six participants engaged in daily 15-minute chats with an apparent partner who was actually an assistant; on day four the assistant either stopped texting, conveyed unwillingness to continue then stopped, or maintained interaction. Both sudden silence and explicit rejection produced significant negative emotional effects. Negative effects from sudden silence frequently persisted longer than those from explicit rejection. The experimental design reduced reliance on retrospective memory, limiting recall bias present in previous reports.
Everyone who has ever been ghosted while dating can attest that it is not a nice feeling when the other side suddenly turns completely silent. While the fact that ghosting leads to negative emotions has been confirmed by several studies, these were often so-called retrospective studies. This means that the volunteers who participated had to remember the last time they had been ghosted and then answer questions about it.
The research team, led by Alessia Telari of the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy, did not rely on memories of ghosting, but created an experimental situation in which volunteers were either ghosted or rejected by their communication partner. In the first part of the study, 46 volunteers chatted for 15 minutes each day with another person. They were told that the other person was also a participant, but in fact they were an assistant of the researchers.
Collection
[
|
...
]