If you want to know whether your relationship will last, it may be that all you need to do is take a word association test that captures your hidden feelings, according to a new study from researcher Ronald D. Rogge at the University of Rochester. Rogge recognized the difficulty in determining relationship health, since it “assumes that they know themselves how happy they are, and that’s not always the case. 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.”
The test Rogge developed appears to predict with accuracy whether or not the relationship will last by capturing a person’s automatic reactions about his or her partner – reactions they may not even realize stem from feelings they are having about their partner.
Participants were required to provide the name of their partner along with words that they associate with their partner, like a pet name. Rogge developed two tests for the 222 volunteers who participated in the survey. In one test, the participant was required to hit the space bar every time they saw a good word appear on a monitor with a partner word, and another in which there was a negative word with a partner word. In theory, it would be easier for those in happy relationships to react to the positive words than to the negative.
The results of the study showed that participants who found it easier to relate their partner to the negative words than the positive words were more likely to separate within the year. The test was also more accurate than the survey the couples took about their feelings about the strength of their relationship prior to starting the test.
“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,” said Rogge.
Shadra Bruce is a contributing writer for Mental Health News.
