Do Ghosters Care? Breaking Down an Academic Study on Ghosting

What happens when someone vanishes from your life without a word? In this episode, host Gretta dives into the social phenomenon of ghosting with insights from researchers Yejin Park and Nadav Klein. Together, they unpack the latest research on ghosting, specifically YeJin and Nadav's study, Ghosting: Social Rejection Without Explanation, But Not Without Care. Surprisingly, some ghosts believe that disappearing without a trace is the kinder choice. While this doesn't justify ghosting, it offers a deeper look into the psychology behind it. Join us as we explore the emotional dynamics of human behavior in relationships and challenge the way we think about ghosting.

Connect With Gretta:
Coaching Sessions
Free and Private Facebook Support Group |  Instagram | YouTube | copingwithghosting.com

Coping with Ghosting offers high-value 1:1 coaching with Vogue-featured expert Gretta Perlmutter, delivering evidence-based strategies that transform personal betrayal into a powerful catalyst for change. Gretta’s platform empowers individuals from diverse backgrounds to heal, build renewed confidence, and experience breakthrough personal growth.

The Paper:
Ghosting: Social rejection without explanation, but not without care.

Connect With Yejin Park and  Nadav Klein:
yejin.park@stern.nyu.edu | nadav.klein@insead.edu

Music: "Ghosted" by Gustavo Ramos

Disclaimer:  This information is designed to mentor and guide you to cope with Ghosting by cultivating a positive mindset and implementing self-care practices. It is for educational purposes only; it solely provides self-help tools for your use. Coping With Ghosting is not providing health care or psychological therapy services and is not diagnosing or treating any physical or mental ailment of the mind or body. The content is not a substitute for therapy or any advice given by a licensed psychologist or other licensed or other registered professionals. 

Chapters

• 12:30 Different Types of Ghosting
• 15:00 Accidental Ghosting
• 17:30 Ghosting Out of Care Controversy
• 26:50 Improving Your Behavior Mode
• 35:29 Why Ghosts Suffer
• 38:57 Navigating Ghosting and Building Relationships

Transcript

Gretta Perlmutter: 0:17

Welcome to Coping with Ghosting, the podcast that provides hope, healing and understanding for anyone who's been ghosted. I'm your host, greta, and today's focus is on a research paper called Ghosting Social Rejection Without Explanation, but Not Without Care, published in Journal of Experimental Psychology General in Yejin Park and Nadav Klein, both of whom are with me today, welcome to Coping with Ghosting.

Gretta Perlmutter: 0:49

Good to be here, thank you so much for inviting us. Gretta. I'm beyond grateful that you are here. I think this is such an interesting paper and a lot of research needs to be done in this area, so good on you for tackling it and I'd love for you to please share a little bit about the work that you do and what led you to research ghosting Yejin. If you would want to begin that, that would be great.

Yejin Park: 1:18

Of course. So I'm currently a PhD student at NYU Stern and it's a business school, but I'm one of the few psychologists in a business school and I really really care about what are people's psychology, the way they think and their biases that prevent people from engaging in behaviors, especially building relationships that are actually mutually beneficial are actually mutually beneficial and, um, actually the main thing that occupies my time recently is on play and how that strengthens relationships, so it can almost be viewed as a converse of ghosting, but, um, I had the huge privilege of working with Adaf since can you believe it? Early 2020. And it was right when COVID began. So I think there's just it wasn't. Obviously we weren't excited about COVID, but it was very applicable to the context of, like everything moving online, and Nadav can probably speak to that a lot more too can probably speak to that a lot more too.

Nadav Klein: 2:30

Thank you, yes, Nadav, I'd like to hear about the work you do and what led you to do this as well. Yeah, I mean, I'm very interested in how people misunderstand each other, with the aim of helping them understand each other better. When I was a little kid, I would sit around in the schoo school yard and sit on a plain ball or whatever. I would sit on the bench and the people would walk by kids and teachers and we'd try to psychoanalyze them based on complete gibberish. But now I do the same, but with some evidence, so it's hopefully less gibberish. Gibberish and it struck us at the time that ghosting, which is a fairly common behavior, is a particular behavior. It's particularly likely that people would misunderstand each other because ghosting, by definition, doesn't have feedback or doesn't have explanation for why a relationship ends or doesn't begin or doesn't continue, and so that seemed like a good place to start looking, basically. So here we are, a few years later.

Gretta Perlmutter: 3:34

Yes, I see it's so fascinating. I would like to begin by sharing the definition of ghosting that I use on this podcast. I think there's so many definitions and I just want to clarify that I'm using the Oxford dictionaries, which is the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication, and so this is different than leaving an abusive situation without a goodbye or disappearing after a boundary has been violated, and I, just for your paper, I read that you defined it as the act of ending a relationship by ignoring another person's attempts to connect.

Nadav Klein: 4:18

Yep, yeah, we weren't considering abusive relationships as one of the categories. Obviously, in real, real life it is definitely exists. So I wouldn't also include that in ghosting, but we tried to ask our participants or people how they would define ghosting and those are the things that came up. So ending a relationship whether it was an expectation of it continuing or there was an expectation of response, so it's the ending part that's important and without an explanation part that's important. And if you think it's kind of an odd behavior, because when you're expected to do something, such as give an explanation or connect with somebody, people usually comply, usually conform. Being a sheep is a very strong thing for people, so this is a little bit of a norm violation. Like you're violating a norm, you're violating another person's expectation of you. So it is interesting that it's so common to see this behavior.

Gretta Perlmutter: 5:24

So I know this study contains eight experiments. Could you please share an overview of this study in general?

Yejin Park: 5:33

There are so many ways to approach a research topic and ultimately write a paper. But I think both Nadav and I are very much what we call phenomenologically driven scholars. We're really intrigued by a social phenomena, we care about it, especially the psychology of it, and where this misunderstanding as Nadav talked about earlier, you know arises and I think, based on our personal experience, because we both were honest enough to acknowledge that we both have been ghosters and ghosties in our lives and somehow, when we are ghosting people, we don't feel like that bad about it, that guilty about it, even though it is a normal violation, whereas when we're recipients of a ghost, it hurts us painfully. You know it's, it's a really difficult experience, experience. So that led us to think, okay, there might be these um misperceptions undergirding this behavior and so, um, why don't we begin with a really simple experiment, asking people to recall a time that they were either ghosted or have been ghosted? And, um, because it's an experiment, everything else is the same in terms of, like, what the prompt is and the types of measures that they respond after that. But it's only that the perspective that they take is different and we saw remarkable differences in what ghosties actually experienced, so they felt like a lot more negative emotions. They also felt like the other party cared about them less, when in fact, ghosters actually cared about them a lot more and they mispredicted the impact that they had.

Yejin Park: 7:18

And so, after these scenario experiments and recall studies, it was really important for us to find a creative way to actually reenact ghosting in a lab, so that you can take away all these other confounding factors that might cause reviewers and other readers to be like wait, isn't this another extraneous variable? Um, so so we recreated ghosting in the lab by getting um participants to um randomly be assigned to either be a ghoster or ghosty. Obviously, we don't tell them um these roles and those who are ghosters, um, they, they um are like basically engaged in a chat conversation with the other party, and after the first conversation, they then are moved to the second screen and they find out that there's this technical error and they have to wait for 30 minutes or more for this to be resolved, resolved, and they have the option to either stay and wait or to leave, and most rational people participants would um just leave because they will be compensated regardless. And um, but then the other party, importantly the ghosty they don't know anything, they don't know why all of this that's going on in the other end. So they just think that the ghost or um just left them without explanation and so we it recreates that experience and then leads um, and then we ask them about how they feel and predict the other parties care for them.

Yejin Park: 9:00

So I think that was the most um cool um study that we ran for this and um. The final thing I want to mention is that, in addition to the experiments, we ran three pilot studies. That was really important to disentangle ghosting with other related rejection behaviors like direct rejection, ostracism and um. That showed, not through experiments but like inductively using all the essays, that um were generated, um to code, using text analysis on how um it differs conceptually and we also found evidence for that. So I think overall it's a really cool package, using a lot of different methods to show that ghosting is real, it's a phenomenon, it's something that's been neglected and social scientists should care about this and more people should study it.

Nadav Klein: 9:58

Right, and it's interesting because in ghosting the ghoster is always the bad guy. Right, because they are the ones that are violating norms and not responding back. But if you look at their perspective and we also consulted, as Eugene said, our experiences having ghosted others it might not come from evil motives or misanthropic motives. Rather, what we find is that ghosters actually care about ghosties' well-being and in fact, because they care to some extent, they ghost Because the other option is to say to you hey, we should not continue this relationship in one way or another. And they have this intuition that that would be worse, that that would hurt your feelings more if I tell you this than if I ghost, and it would make you feel rejected more if I tell you this than if I ghost. And it's just this mistaken intuition. In fact, the ghosties prefer to be told, even though it's an uncomfortable conversation, that people ghost. So what we find in some of the experiments is that the more pro-social, the more you care about the ghostie, the more likely you are to ghost, as opposed to reject with an explanation.

Nadav Klein: 11:19

And it's just this misunderstanding. So it doesn't come from ill motives. In fact, ironically, it comes from empathy and caring for the other person that people decide to ghost. So it's an interesting error. It's just a misunderstanding that leads to ghosting in the first place and also leads ghosting. You mentioned, greta, in the beginning, how to reframe being ghosted, and I think one of the hardest things about ghosting, you tell us, is believing that the other person doesn't care about you or wouldn't, you know, couldn't care less. But in fact ghosters do care and in fact, because they care, they ghost, which is just a social error, right? Not so much that they don't care.

Gretta Perlmutter: 12:01

So there's a lot that you just said, and I think that people ghost for many, many, many different reasons. And some people ghost because they actually do want to be malicious and there was actually a study done on this like ghosting in the dark triad as well. Some people ghost because they genuinely think the other person is better off just without them, or because, um, they, they are just, like they want to say something, but maybe they they don't. They don't know how to say it, like they're, they just they don't have the words, they lack communication skills. So I would say that what you've done is great, because it shows that this is why some people ghost. But I'm wondering if we could say like, or if there could be another study on what is the percentage of ghosters that do this because of this reason or that reason or this reason?

Nadav Klein: 13:01

So we also measure. So we just talked about motives for ghosting that are I care for the other person, but because I care, I don't understand how really they would feel if they ghost. So I ghost because I think that's the caring thing to do. Yeah, we also measure self-interested motives, which is like I don't want to feel inconvenienced, I don't feel like I don't want to feel uncomfortable myself to have this hard conversation, and that's certainly there, although it's not misunderstood by ghosties. In fact, for the most part they kind of get the amount of self-interested motives and then in the other part, so there we have I care about you, therefore a ghost, I care about myself, I don't want to inconvenience myself, therefore a ghost.

Nadav Klein: 13:43

And then we have another paper that Eugene and I are working on, which we call accidental ghosting, and by accidental we mean I really want to respond, I really want to continue our relationship. However, I either don't get around to it or, as you said, I don't really know quite what to say and so I just don't do it, kind of like I really mean to go to the gym, but I just don't do it. Kind of like you know, I really mean to go to the gym but I don't quite do it, or any many things that we procrastinate in our lives, and as time accumulates and I haven't responded, it becomes different, it becomes more difficult to respond and so, by accident, I end up ghosting. You know, and I think there's those three possibilities, are definitely three segments of ghosters. Right, there's the misanthropic self-interested, you know, and I think there's those three possibilities are definitely there's three segments of ghosters, right, there's the misanthropic self-interested, there's the overly caring and then there's the accidental, at least as far as based on our research.

Gretta Perlmutter: 14:35

Thank you for that. That's really interesting. So I'm really happy that you're doing more research on this and I wonder if, after this accidental ghosting paper, you're going to be doing even more studies, or if there's something else you think researchers should focus on in the future.

Yejin Park: 14:56

Yeah, I mean, I think there's just so many opportunities.

Yejin Park: 14:58

But one thing that Nadav didn't mention is that in our accidental ghosting study we also care not just about diagnosing issues in the world but actually solving them and kind of fixing these perceptual errors.

Yejin Park: 15:13

So we're preparing to run a study that is an intervention to reduce accidental ghosting and it builds on existing work that tries to nudge people to engage in behaviors that they want to do but they just struggle to do.

Yejin Park: 15:43

So we provide people basically a template on like how to respond to a late email, for example, and with um, just like you know how to like be frank and apologize for being, for not responding, and then um, and then responding to to this um, the request that the other party, um, asked you for. And just that template we predict will reduce the amount of accidental ghosting, and so it obviously will not reduce all forms of ghosting, because those who have other motives wouldn't be like you know that those motives won't be addressed by this template, but at least for those who struggle with difficulty of formulating a response, we're predicting it will be effective. So that's that's something we're really excited about and think that there's just a lot more room for more interventions to be designed and to help basically both parties in like in any relationship, to be better calibrated and you know what's in their minds, what's in their hearts and souls and to be on the same page.

Nadav Klein: 16:49

Right, and it's kind of like funny to say oh well, you need a template for an email, a text message to respond to somebody. But it reduces the hassle factor and sometimes that's important. Sometimes these bottlenecks are kind of silly, Like why do you need a template? You could just write an email? Yes, that's true, but there's all these other things that a person does in a given day that just reducing a little bit the hassle factor or nudging them can help, Because if you have an accidental ghosting situation, you really want to respond. So we're just making it easier for people to do so. So we're just making it easier for people to do so. Having said that, Greta, I think it's, I surmise that you have so far we've really analyzed ghosters and I surmise you have a more, a less sanguine attitude about ghosters than our research suggests, at least in some of the cases. So I thought I'd float that into our conversation.

Gretta Perlmutter: 17:43

Yeah, absolutely. I did ask the listeners to provide their feedback on your paper as well. I'm going to read it. Keep in mind that my listeners are people who are really hurting after being ghosted, and so I have a lot of compassion from where they're coming from. So this is what somebody said. This sounds like an excuse on the ghost's part. Leaving someone in the dark and confused is the most evil thing anyone has ever done to me. When people answer surveys and researchers, they know what the correct answer is. People ghost because they are too cowardly to be accountable. Everyone deserves closure. They are too cowardly to be accountable. Everyone deserves closure. And they know that communication is part of the responsibility of being in a relationship. I'm not sure who that research is supposed to help. Just gives people false hope that the person they dated is not exactly what they show you. It's not timed by any reasonable definition. It's always for selfish reasons. So that was the first thing I read.

Nadav Klein: 18:52

Well, I'm glad people are not mincing words. You know it's very important to be direct in life, yeah, I mean well. So it's possible sometimes that it is indeed a shirking of responsibility and it ends up the outcome of it is very hurtful. There's no question about it. But I think the bigger issue sometimes is that I mean, alex this is my opinion, and then Eugene can chime in but the biggest issue is that we want to care for other people but we don't know how to do that.

Nadav Klein: 19:28

You know, there's a skill in that and there's a lot of emphasis in our culture, you know, last 10, 20 years about empathy and caring and so on. And it's one thing to have the intention of caring, but it's another thing to do it appropriately. And it's one thing to have the intention of caring, but it's another thing to do it appropriately. And so sometimes, when we care by our intention, our actions that come from our intention end up hurting people. And it's helpful, I think, to address this misunderstanding. Address this misunderstanding. Obviously, some people indeed don't care and they are misanthropic and they are very callous and don't care about hurting other people, but to the extent that there's a segment of ghosters who do care and they just think that ghosting is the more caring thing to do. If we can correct that misunderstanding, we can help a lot of people and a lot of relationships. So there's no denying that the outcome is very hurtful. We're not making excuses for anybody to understand. Is there a gap that could be closed so that some relationships end up with much better closure?

Yejin Park: 20:42

Okay, because it's much harder to fix misanthropic motives, but it's easier to fix misunderstandings about how to care for others and that's so well said and well, first of all, greta, and to your audience, I want to say I hear you because I've been on dating apps for a long time and I've been hurt by so many men who were either ghosters or like breadcrumbers or like you name it.

Yejin Park: 21:08

You know, they just don't know how to communicate, and my research has actually helped myself because I was able to reframe my default mode of thinking, which was, oh my gosh, like what's wrong with me? And internalize, like you know, issues about myself and and when, in fact, I'm like okay, um, the data suggests that, at least on average, um, go-stars do care and it's more like they are, um, they have, they lack in skill, they lack in communication abilities, they are, um, perhaps less mature and all these other reasons, um, that have nothing to do with me that led to this ghosting and and therefore I choose to reframe my way of thinking to, um, you know, give myself peace and, like, elevate my self-worth. So, um, we are absolutely not condoning ghosting behavior, but we want to give tools to ghosties. Sorry, people who have been ghosted in the past to, you know, regain dignity and manage their relationships, even if someone has treated them poorly.

Gretta Perlmutter: 22:23

Thank, you for saying that. Thank you for saying that. That was really helpful to hear, exactly. Yeah, my takeaway with this whole thing is that, yes, some people may feel like disappearing. Ghosting it's the kinder option. It doesn't make it okay, it doesn't excuse their behavior. You know, as we all know, many mental health professionals consider ghosting to be abuse and when you're ghosted, we, the sad thing is we just don't know what they're thinking or feeling. So what you said about reframing, it is perfect. I would say if somebody's been ghosted, they're listening to this show and they just have this like rumen, like they're ruminating on like why did this happen?

Gretta Perlmutter: 23:04

Why did this happen? You did this happen. You could lean into the radical acceptance of. I don't know why I was ghosted, and it's possible that this person was just really trying to avoid hurting me.

Nadav Klein: 23:17

Right, and I think in general, when we have uncertainty in life and we don't have evidence either way, it's incumbent upon us to make a choice. We have to make a choice. I mean, even if we don't make it consciously, we make it subconsciously and I think it's as Eugene mentioned, it's easier to blame it on ourselves, that it's something about us that that person doesn't like. We can also make a different choice, which is to say it's probably about them, which is probably more true than not, because most of I mean more than likely most of the stuff we do is about us, it's not about other people. So if a ghost are ghosted, then it's about more likely about them than about the ghosty.

Nadav Klein: 23:57

The other point I want to make is that you know most ghosties have been ghosters in the past too. So we can consult our past experience of ghosting others and ask ourselves did we have ill feelings to that person that we ghosted, that we never contacted again? And for most I would suggest for most of us it's not so much ill feelings, it's just either we were too busy or we had this inefficient skill of caring. We thought we were caring for that person but in fact we weren't. So we have. Many people have the experience of both being a ghost or a ghosty, and that can also be a source of information and reframing.

Gretta Perlmutter: 24:45

I have another note from a listener. Somebody said the kindness and wish not to hurt others by disappearing is more related to people pleasing tendencies of the distancer rooted in self-centeredness and avoidance to face their perceived sense of self and denial of how their actions affect others and difficulty in facing the end of the relationship. I see it as another maladaptive coping mechanism.

Nadav Klein: 25:16

Right, and you see this in business a lot, that people want to be liked and obviously it's natural we don't want to be hated by other people. But the goal of being liked can carry a lot of problems. One of them is that you end up ghosting other people. But the goal of being liked can carry a lot of problems, okay, one of them is that you end up ghosting other people because you don't want to have a difficult conversation with them difficult for you and maybe for them, and you want them to like you. So let's not have a difficult conversation, let's just, you know, ignore that responsibility.

Nadav Klein: 25:46

And it comes up in a lot of situation, a lot of situations. One might be negative feedback. So if, if we work together and I gotta give you corrective feedback, I might not do it or I might sugarcoat it. Or it comes up with situations where, um, there is uh, a crisis coming and I don't let you know about it. Uh, until it's almost too late because I don't want to have the conversation, I keep postponing it. So this obviously it makes sense that we want to be liked. It's very human. But if you take it to an extreme, then you're not going to have difficult conversations and you kind of shirk your responsibility to have difficult conversations with people that you ironically care about.

Gretta Perlmutter: 26:28

Absolutely, Yejin. Do you have thoughts about that?

Yejin Park: 26:32

Yeah, I mean like building on that, just because I have to admit that I'm also a people pleaser. I needed to learn how to engage in hard conversations, hard circumstances, difficult people in general conversations, hard circumstances, difficult people in general. And one thing I learned a lot through cognitive behavioral therapy is to learn to just shift the mode of your behavior from one of defend mode to discover mode, and we actually teach this um in stern's undergrad class. So I helped teach a class with jonathan height on like flourishing and it's all about using positive psychology to help students become more resilient. And one of the first things we teach in the class is okay, the currently so much, so much of our life, whether it be technology or anxiety in general, is making us live like in defend mode and it's like being very risk averse and trying like choosing to interpret everything in around your circumstances something that's going to harm you.

Yejin Park: 27:38

So you're trying to like like flee and like um. But actually humans are meant to live in discover mode and to be open to possibilities, to be agentic and be proactive with with all that you have in your life and that like simple shifting. Ultimately, the surrounding nature of the world doesn't change, but your mindset radically changes how you approach things, and it has also hugely affected how students began to form relationships whether it be romantic or platonic ones in undergrad and just be. If someone is showing more avoidant behavior, you can choose to actually take the harder path of reaching out, and I mean saying that this avoidant behavior might be good on the short term, but in the long term it's like not benefiting either one of us, and that helps people like you also can change and influence relationships through that. So it's been really inspiring to see students change in those ways and their relationships, and I'm trying to work on it in my own life too, so that I can try to practice what I preach, but I'm definitely a work in progress as well.

Nadav Klein: 28:59

Right, and I think to build on that, you know another intervention to help is to acquire skills of having difficult conversations with other people, Because if you know how to do that, you probably are less likely to ghost others, right, Because it wouldn't be as detrimental to the ghoster to have an honest conversation. And there are various ways of doing that. I mean the intuitive way is like to tell another person okay, we have to end this relationship, and here's why or skirt around the issue or sugarcoat it or not wanting to hurt, and it's kind of a mess. And you enter a conversation like that with a lot of uncertainty and you don't know how you'd behave and so on. But you can also do it differently. You can solicit the other person's responses.

Nadav Klein: 29:48

So if you want to end a relationship or if you want to end a friendship, you can ask questions. You know how do you think we're doing? Okay, what is going well for you, what is not going well for you? And then kind of engage in conversation with the other person and then state your own opinion after the other person participated and you had a chance to say their piece. And of course it's not going to make the conversation more pleasant, but it's going to make the conversation more reciprocal and more participatory and at the end, even though maybe the relationship is over, everybody walks away still friends or still friendly, without any trauma or any pain. And so if we can increase or better skills, if we have better skills, I think we can reduce a lot of pain due to misunderstandings.

Gretta Perlmutter: 30:43

I agree completely. I think open, honest, respectful, clear communication is key in relationships and I definitely intend on having more podcast episodes that are dedicated to how to have how to break up with someone in a way that's caring and considerate, or how to break up with a friend or a family member Just like how. How can you do that Like this is? Or a family member, just like how. How can you do that Like this?

Yejin Park: 31:11

is.

Yejin Park: 31:12

This is the whole next phase of my work.

Yejin Park: 31:12

Well, I love that so much and not to like try to tie my messy research programs together, but I really think in person relationships is huge in building the skill of having difficult conversations. So, unfortunately, um gen, gen z's and whatever the next generation is called um, where a lot of communication relationships are increasingly going online and that makes um create it creates more loopholes for to escape basically and um and and like engage in this maladaptive relationship, um behaviors. But when you're in person, you are forced to confront this person and and it also humanizes them because you actually see a person right in front of you and um and you have to like you see, you see the humanity in them, basically, and so through like in-person relationships I I really think a lot of these um problems with their communication is like just like easily um reduced and resolved and um in particular, what you do in these in-person relationships also matter and um a lot of my work on play looks at how play helps you become more resilient and helps form more like better communication abilities too.

Nadav Klein: 32:36

So I'm really excited that you're going to venture in that space and help people heal, you know from, from ghosting and all these like negative relationship experiences there's other research that suggests that when we have looming negative events or something's got difficult conversations coming up, oh boy, I don't know how I'm going to handle this, and it's going to be awkward or it's going to be, it's going to drag on or whatever. The anticipation is often worse than the experience. Right, you know, you're anticipating it and it's, it's uncertain, and so you have visions in your mind of where it's going to go and you always think about the worst possible outcome and the most extreme or emotional possible outcome. But the reality is that's yeah, that's one possible world, but for the most part it's really, uh, it's less likely to happen than you think, uh, whereas in fact you. Once something bad happens, we have this natural psychological immune system that to some extent blunts the impact, and so if you tell somebody you know, unfortunately it's time to break up, they naturally erect defenses because they're in the experience.

Nadav Klein: 33:48

Okay, so there's research on. So when you're an academic, so there's research, basically that about people perceiving what breakup would be like, and people who actually have experienced breakup and the people who have experienced breakup say it's far less bad, it's still bad, it's not great, but it's far less bad than people who are asked to think about it, who are currently in a relationship, and the reason for that is if something bad happens, there's a lot of mechanisms that we use to reduce the impact. We think about the things. We do, other things we move on. We reduce the importance of the current relationship that just ended and we think about why it might not have been good.

Nadav Klein: 34:29

We use something called hindsight bias. We say, yeah, you know what, now that I think about it, it wasn't really meant to be. Which is using our biases to help us, which can happen, and the biases that we have are adaptive to some extent to make sure that we come out of the other side as happy as we were beforehand over time. So oftentimes it's the anticipation that kills you, and because the anticipation is so negative, you just never do it. You just never engage in the conversation and you ghost. So just going through it often is far less bad than you think.

Gretta Perlmutter: 35:06

Yeah, and it's rip it right off know yeah, it's so worth it, it's so important because otherwise you lose the opportunity to to grow and maturely communicate. I mean there's so many ramifications of ghosting. I mean it's stressful. It people feel stress, anxiety, shame, guilt there.

Nadav Klein: 35:25

There's so many problems that can come along with being a ghost right, and I think if you're a ghoster, if you, if you've done before, I mean there's a sense in which you're exhibiting lack of self-confidence or lack of I don't know. You're not doing an honorable thing, and when you don't do an honorable thing, that affects your how you view yourself right, and so you don't want to keep doing that in your life, because then your evaluation of yourself will come down right, because you're acting in a way that's not particularly honorable. You are choosing not to have the difficult conversation, even though you, even though you know you should, and so looking yourself in the mirror is going to become harder and harder over time, because of the behavior that you have is inconsistent with sort of an honorable self-concept.

Gretta Perlmutter: 36:15

Well said. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with listeners about ghosting or being ghosted? I?

Yejin Park: 36:24

don't know if this is my last words, but I can't emphasize enough the importance of like, elevating like one's self-worth and the other party's worth, just in general, and how that resolves so many relationship problems, including ghosting. If you um, look the other person in the eye, um and um and like, wow, this is another human being, like, made so beautifully and wonderfully, then like I don't think it's. It will be much harder to um treat them poorly and and so I. Ultimately, we're not ghosting scholars per se, but we really care about like. How do you help people live more optimally and how to improve like organizations through that and so, but perhaps that ultimately boils down to like how you view a human worth and and always be conscious to you know, elevate that right.

Nadav Klein: 37:34

And I think another thought, last thought, is uh, it kind of matters how you enter a relationship friendship, romantic relationship, whatever relationship because if you have clear goals and if you have clear uh, even more so if you have clear no-nos, you know, if you have clear goals and if you have clear, even more so if you have clear no-no's, you know, if you have clear limits and boundaries and this is what I know, this is what I want generally then it's much easier to end the relationship respectfully, right.

Nadav Klein: 38:01

It's when you're drifting then that ending a relationship becomes harder, because you never came into the situation with your goals intact, and so on. And the same, I think, goes for both sides, right, I mean a person, if you were ghosted, then you partnered up with somebody who acted dishonorably towards you, okay. Partnering up with somebody who acted dishonorably towards you, okay. And so in both cases both the ghost and the ghosty, something there's some reflection to be done, I think, about how you enter the relationship or why you entered a relationship to begin with. Could you have thought about yourself differently coming in, that then, by the time it ended, you would have ended in a different way. That's mostly applies to the ghoster, but I think it applies to both sides, so the entry kind of matters as well coming in.

Yejin Park: 38:57

I think that makes sense and that's so interesting because we talk about ending conversations a lot. We almost never talk about like starting conversations, um, and like, like most friendships, they happen, like they like start organically because you were, like you know, drinking um with someone at a dinner party, for example, and you bump into them and, um, you, you know, start with small talk. And small talk almost never is one that clearly sets your boundaries and who you are and what you don't like, and professional relationships sing, or it's very little self-disclosure. So that's such an interesting thought, nadav, and let me mull on that for a bit more and see if our next research project should be on starting conversations research project should be on starting conversations, right?

Nadav Klein: 39:53

I mean, it's hard to succeed in anything, including relationships, accidentally. It's possible, right, but even if you met somebody accidentally or by serendipity, the success of the relationship is intentional. Eventually, right, I'd imagine? So um so the entry and the maintenance of the relationship is part of this conversation. I think it's not just. The ending is what it is. I think so.

Gretta Perlmutter: 40:18

Yeah, yeah, and I always encourage people who I coach, who I interact with, to reflect on the relationship and how they showed up. I think that everyone is a teacher Ghosts are a teacher and we can look back and say, well, was there some behavior that I maybe missed? Were there some red flags? But to also be really compassionate yeah, I didn't see the red flags because I didn't understand that that was a red flag at the time.

Gretta Perlmutter: 40:51

And sometimes ghosts actually, you know, when they do have certain personality disorders, they feed people exactly what they want to hear. They know how to move, they know how to be the perfect match kind of person, and so sometimes it really is impossible to predict being ghosted. In fact, in a lot of cases that I deal with it, it's just like there were no signs and then it just suddenly happened. So, if you do reflect on the beginning of the relationship, the ending just always come from a place of love for yourself. And, yeah, prioritize self-care, because when there is silence, we often fill the void with our deepest, darkest fears, our negative beliefs, and so just focusing on the facts and knowing that it is possible that this person really did this from what they considered to be a good place, even if it was misguided judgment.

Nadav Klein: 41:56

Yeah, we have to back a self-care because we only have one self. So if we don't care for the self, who will right?

Yejin Park: 42:03

Yeah, yeah. And then, like, just remind yourself that ghosting is a form of rejection, one of the more painful ones, and when you're rejected it's physically painful. Research shows that it's actually, like, biologically painful. And so please acknowledge that pain and lean into other people in your life who care for you. Um, because, um, one of the best remedies for relational um dissolution is to lean into those who are currently in your life who care about you, and to fill that void rather than, um, like ignoring it and just trying to move on because it doesn't work that way, right yeah, in the long run you're probably better off now if somebody ghosted you.

Nadav Klein: 42:52

Is that really you know? Is that a long-term prospect?

Gretta Perlmutter: 42:58

I don't know, I personally I'm sad that I was ghosted and I also am very intentional about who I allow into my life and I want people in relationship to communicate with me authentically and honestly, even if it is hard.

Nadav Klein: 43:17

Yeah, we have another study in that paper that asked participants to think about asking somebody who ghosted them for advice or help. Later on it turns out that the ghoster is actually much more willing to help than people think, which is, you know, it's not the best thing in the world. Somebody ghosted you, then you ask for advice or help, but at least the hypothetical mental exercise of thinking that way and the evidence suggests that these ghosters are happy to to help much more happy than we think is also helpful in reframing. It means that it's not really about you, it's about them. Okay, and they don't hate you, because otherwise it wouldn't have helped you or they would not be willing to help you later on. It's just a glitch that they have.

Yejin Park: 44:03

I'm glad you pointed it out, nadav, because ultimately our human capital, the capital we have within ourselves, is super limited. Our social capital is like a lot broader, and how we take advantage of the relationships that we have really um like influences your life's outcomes a lot. And so if um ghost, that study basically shows that ghosting has implications not just for your well-being but like the how you perceive, like the breadth of your relationships that you can tap into, so it has a lot of um more tangible outcomes, if I may um so I hope that your podcast and all the other future ghosting research just helps people you know, take um, take greater control of their lives and um be, yeah, live in discover mode.

Gretta Perlmutter: 44:59

Thank you. How can listeners connect with you both and read the paper?

Nadav Klein: 45:05

So the paper is available, I think you just uh Google it and you'll find some sort of PDF of it. There also are summaries of it. So I am in a school called INSEAD I-N-S-E-A-D, and they have this magazine called INSEAD Knowledge, and so they create a summary of the paper so you can kind of read the summary. Eugene, I'm sure there's a summary somewhere on your end as well. So just Google us and then you can just email us. You know, and we will not ghost you, because Greta we know Greta sent you so so you're already good.

Yejin Park: 45:47

Absolutely, unless it goes into spam. I I really hope it doesn't, but we will never um intentionally ghost you and please. Yeah, we always love feedback and I uh, great, I really love that you got your um audiences, um feedback, because it's really nice to see, like, how people respond to it, and we love direct um, you know, raw, um, like honest feelings.

Gretta Perlmutter: 46:11

So thank you so much for that yeah, and I'll definitely link to the paper and put your emails in the show notes as well, and I just want to say thank you both so much for coming on this podcast, because your work is so important and integral to our understanding of this topic.

Yejin Park: 46:30

Thank you. Thank you so much. We're excited. I mean, I did not know there was a podcast, just really for ghostings. It's really cool to know that you exist and you're doing this great work.

Nadav Klein: 46:45

So keep up your great work.

Gretta Perlmutter: 46:47

Thank you and listeners, please follow me at Coping with Ghosting on social media and I invite you to join my free and private Coping with Ghosting Facebook support group and, as always, leave a rating for this podcast so other people can find it and finally, remember when you're ghosted. You have more time to connect with yourself and people who have stellar communication skills. You deserve the best.