July 8: Researchers have developed a word game that can help tell whether a romantic relationship is heading for a split. University of Rochester researchers used a so-called implicit task, which shows how lovers automatically respond to words: In this case, whether they find it easier to link words referring to their partner to words with pleasant or unpleasant meanings.
Most research on relationship success has focused on how the people in the relationship feel about each other. And this is usually done by the obvious route: Asking them.
“But the difficulty with that is, it assumes that they know themselves how happy they are, and that’s not always the case,” says Ronald D. Rogge, psychologist at the University of Rochester.
“To make things worse, a lot of people don’t want to tell you if they’re starting to feel less happy in their relationship,” adds Mr Rogge. So he and his colleagues Soonhee Lee and Harry T. Reis turned to a technique often used to assess racism and bias, other feelings people have trouble admitting to themselves and to researchers. The 222 volunteers in their study were all involved in a romantic relationship.