Hidden feelings revealed by words drills

A new study published in the July edition of the journal  Psychological Science has found that both men and women in a relationship who don't openly admit it's over tend to reveal their real feelings via word association drills.

Ronald D. Rogge, PhD, an assistant clinical psychology professor focusing on early marriage at the University of Rochester, New York and colleagues enlisted 222 individuals involved in a relationship to note their partner's first name and two other words synonymous with their partner (a characteristic or pet name).

The participants were then asked to view a screen showing various words one at a time separated into three groups ‘good' (peace, sharing, vacation), ‘bad' (criticizing, tragedy, death) and the previous submitted partner words (name, term of endearment, characteristic).

Each was then asked to press a space bar whenever they saw either good words or partner words, and the same during a second drill with a mix of bad words and partner words.

Probably something similar to online word tests, except with the customized good, bad and partner words, like:  http://similarminds.com/word/test.php.

On July 7, Rogge said, according to PsychologicalScience.org, that, "the idea is to get at people's automatic reactions to the words - if they have generally good associations with their partners, they should be able to do the first task more easily than the second."

The drills apparently worked as the researchers concluded they were able to predict breakups nearly a year in advance and it worked better than a partner's verbal assessment of their relationship.

Rogge added, "It really is giving us a unique glimpse into how people were feeling about their partners - giving us information that they were unable or unwilling to report."

It could be possible that breakups are in your future and most likely word association iPhone applications.

Full study, "Assessing the Seeds of Relationship Decay: Using Implicit Evaluations to Detect the Early Stages of Disillusionment": http://www.psychologicalscience.org/redesign/index.php/news/releases/predicting-relationship-breakups-with-a-word-association-task.html