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Relationships… they’re a complicated beast. They are like a mirror that shows you who you really are. But at the same time, it is difficult to look at your own relationship objectively. It is much easier (and more fun) to analyze the love lives of others. We’ve all been there: you hear that a couple is breaking up and the first thing you think is: “I knew it wouldn’t last.” But is that actually true? Did you really know that? According to new research, that’s probably not the case.
Did you know?
What if we told you that you might not be as good a ‘breakup predictor’ as you think? A brand new study from the United States, published in the journal Social Psychological Bulletin , says that human memory sometimes tricks us. You may think you ‘knew’ it, but actually you didn’t know it at all. Our perception of relationships is often clouded by what researchers call ‘hindsight bias’. This means that after an event, such as a break-up , we tend to think that we could have seen it all coming in advance.
In the recent study, scientists surveyed more than 1,000 students and adults to investigate the role of hindsight bias in judging relationships. And what they discovered was remarkable. According to the research team, it is only after you hear that a couple has broken up that you consider the breakup to be obvious.
But here’s the interesting twist: at that point, you tend to focus on the negative aspects of the relationship instead of the positive ones. You suddenly remember the bad features of the relationship and not the good features. And that makes you evaluate the relationship more negatively to justify the ‘logical’ outcome.
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The research
To test the impact of this phenomenon, the researchers conducted two studies . They gave each study participant a story about a seemingly happy couple who had both good and bad aspects to their relationship, such as a strong emotional bond but also differing religious beliefs.
The participants were then divided into three groups, with each group given different information about the couple’s relationship status six months later. One group received no information, the second group was told that the couple had broken up and the third group was told a positive outcome (together or engaged). The researchers mainly wanted to know whether people would evaluate the relationship differently if they knew that the couple had broken up instead of staying together.
When the researchers looked at the results, they found that there was not much difference between the groups that were given no information or a positive scenario. However, there was a stark contrast between these two groups and the group that was told that the couple had separated. Those who had read that the relationship had ended felt that a break-up was much more likely and rated the couple’s relationship more negatively.
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How is this possible?
According to the researchers, the signs of an impending rupture that were ignored or unnoticed are now becoming more relevant. They bring up ideas about how things could have been different.
“Memory can be reconstructed with emphasis on the negative elements of the relationship,” the researchers say. “What was previously interpreted as constant attention and affection can now be reframed as neediness from a dominant partner. Differences in beliefs that were previously seen as opportunities for perspective and negotiation can now be perceived as insurmountable obstacles.”
What does this all mean to you? This research suggests that the tendency to think in retrospect that you could have predicted the end of a relationship may have more to do with your own memory than your skill at predicting. So before you crown yourself the new relationship guru, remember that hindsight bias can play a role in how you see it afterwards.
Conversely, this can also be useful to know if you are dealing with a relationship break-up. If others tell you afterwards that ‘it was expected‘ or ‘that it was doomed to failure’, keep in mind that this may be unjustified. So the next time you hear the news of a break-up, be a little more lenient in your judgment. Often there is more going on than what you can see on the surface.
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