Are the weepy breakup scenes of film and television more fiction than fact? A new study called "Mispredicting Distress Following Romantic Breakup: Revealing the Time Course of the Affective Forecasting Error" suggests breakup stress is rarely as bad as we imagine.
The study, to be published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology online on August 20, 2007, states that "people evidence significant inaccuracies when predicting their response to many emotional life events" -- including dealing with an intense romantic relationship ending.
For 38 weeks, 10 women and 16 men to fill out bi-weekly questionnaires measuring stress levels during the relationship and during the post-breakup stage. Results showed people recuperate from a breakup quicker than they thought. According to the press release, this is because "people might not take account of the good outcomes that follow a breakup, such as the benefits of being single" and therefore their anticipated sadness is not in keeping with their actual post-breakup sadness. In fact, "lovers, especially those madly in love, do much better -- almost immediately -- following a breakup than they imagined they would."
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