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Is breaking up so hard to do?
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Despite the laments1 of pining pop stars and 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 psychology3 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 profess2 ardent4 affection -- to see if their predictions of devastation5 matched their actual angst when that love was lost.
"On average, people overestimate6 how distressed8 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 distress7 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."
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尽管流行歌手和诗人总把失恋说的很痛苦，但近日，美国研究人员称，分手可能没那么难。
西北大学的心理学副教授埃里•芬克尔说：“我们低估了自己承受失恋痛苦的能力。”该研究结果在《实验社会心理学期刊》的网站上公布。
芬克尔与同事鲍尔•伊斯特威克对年轻情侣，尤其是那些自称爱得很深的情侣进行了调查，以确定他们对失恋后痛苦程度的预测与实际情况是否相符。
芬克尔在接受一个电话采访时说：“平均来看，人们高估了自己失恋后的痛苦。”
该项研究历时九个月，调查对象是谈恋爱至少有两个月的大学生，他们每两周填写一次调查问卷。研究人员收集了26个调查对象的资料——10名女性、16名男性，他们都在调查期间的头六个月内就与恋人分手了。
研究人员将调查对象在分手前两周对痛苦程度的预测与他们分手后四个不同阶段的实际情况进行了对比。
不出意料，研究人员发现，爱得越深的人越难承受分手。
芬克尔说：“爱得较深的人在分手后确实要更痛苦一些，但他们对自己痛苦的预期与实际情况相比，却被大大高估了。”
“总之，分手没你想象的那么痛苦。”
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