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People across the globe recognize ghosting as a common way to end relationships, but geographic location tends to influence how acceptable they find the practice. Research published in the *Journal of Social and Personal Relationships* provides evidence that individuals from different countries vary in their intentions to cut off contact and their actual history of doing so. The findings suggest that severing ties without explanation is a worldwide phenomenon with distinct regional patterns.
Ghosting occurs when a person abruptly stops communicating with someone else to end their relationship, offering no warning or explanation for their departure. Most previous research on this type of social rejection has relied heavily on participants from the United States and Western Europe. A vast majority of studies on close relationships tend to exclude people from African, Asian, and Latin American countries.
“There has been a lot of research on ghosting over the past 10 years or so, but much of that research (like the broader research on close relationships) has focused on participants from certain regions,” said Gili Freedman, an associate professor of psychology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. To address this geographic gap, Freedman and co-author Darcey Powell, an associate professor of psychology at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, designed a project comparing behaviors across twelve countries.
“In this set of studies, Darcey Powell and I wanted to gain an understanding of whether ghosting is commonly used across 12 countries that spanned multiple continents,” Freedman said. “We also wanted to examine people’s attitudes, intentions, and behaviors in regard to ghosting in both friendships and romantic relationships in these 12 countries.”
Cultural backgrounds often shape how people navigate social rejection and manage their interpersonal networks. People in some societies prioritize social harmony and group cohesion, which might influence whether they view abruptly ending a relationship as offensive. Another factor is relational mobility, which describes how easily individuals in a society can choose and form new relationships.
In their first study, Freedman and Powell recruited 885 young adults between the ages of 18 and 29. The participants lived in Canada, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United States. They read a specific description of ghosting and answered questions about their familiarity with the concept.
The participants rated the acceptability of ghosting on a one to seven scale. They also estimated their likelihood of doing it on a zero to 100 percent scale and reported their past experiences with friends and romantic partners. In their statistical models, Freedman and Powell accounted for the age and gender of the participants.
The data from the first study showed that the concept of ghosting is widely known, with roughly 96 percent of participants recognizing the behavior. People in different regions sometimes used alternative slang, such as the word “mizing” in South Africa, to describe the act of ignoring someone. Freedman and Powell found that participants from Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa reported higher levels of acceptance for the practice than participants from the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Freedman and Powell also found differences in how people intended to act in the future. Participants across all six countries were more likely to say they would ghost someone in a short-term relationship, estimating a 52 percent likelihood on average, compared to just a 20 percent likelihood for a long-term relationship. Generally, participants reported a higher likelihood of ghosting friends than romantic partners, a trend most prominent in Canada and Mexico.
Looking at past behavior, people in Kenya reported the highest rates of cutting off a romantic partner. About 54 percent of the Kenyan participants had ghosted a romantic partner, compared to 30 percent of participants in the United States. In the United States and Canada, ghosting a friend was generally more common than ghosting a romantic partner. In Canada, about 51 percent of participants reported ghosting a friend, compared to 31 percent who had ghosted a romantic partner.
For their second study, Freedman and Powell surveyed a broader age range of 1,741 adults with an average age of 31. This sample included participants from Brazil, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines, and Ukraine. Survey materials were translated into the most popular local language for each country.
Similar to the first study, participants read a description of ghosting and answered questions about their knowledge, attitudes, future intentions, and past behaviors. Freedman and Powell once again controlled for participant age and gender in their statistical analyses to ensure these demographic factors did not skew the outcomes.
In this second group, 75 percent of the participants had heard of the specific term ghosting. Awareness varied by location, as over 35 percent of participants in Brazil and Ukraine had not heard of the concept before taking the survey. Acceptability also varied widely across these nations. Participants from the Philippines and Brazil rated ghosting as less acceptable than participants from the other five countries in the group.
Future intentions to cut off contact followed a similar pattern to the first study. People estimated an average 49 percent likelihood of ghosting a short-term partner or friend, compared to an average 31 percent likelihood for long-term relationships. Participants from Kenya reported the highest intentions to ghost overall, while participants from Brazil reported the lowest intentions.
When looking at past actions, Freedman and Powell observed a disconnect between people’s attitudes and their actual behaviors. The data provides evidence that high acceptability in a culture does not guarantee the behavior will be widespread. Participants in India reported some of the highest levels of acceptance for ghosting, but they were the least likely to have actually ghosted a romantic partner, with roughly 16 percent reporting the behavior. In contrast, participants from Brazil had low intentions and low acceptance, but roughly 53 percent still reported cutting off friends in the past.
Reflecting on the overall results of both studies, Freedman noted that the terminology and frequency of the practice shift depending on the geographic context. “We found that ghosting is a widely known type of social rejection, though it sometimes goes by different names depending on country/region,” Freedman said. “However, individuals’ familiarity with the term ‘ghosting,’ how they feel about it, and how likely they are to have ghosted or been ghosted varies by country.”
The consistency of specific regional trends across both the younger and older participant groups stood out to Freedman and Powell. “For example, we found higher rates of ghosting and of ghosting acceptability with participants from Kenya compared to other countries,” Freedman explained. The authors hope this initial exploration opens the door for more focused examinations of specific global populations.
“Our cross-national work aimed to serve as a foundational step, such that future research could use it as a springboard to explore potential cross-cultural differences between select countries,” Freedman said. Interpreting these country-based differences as strict cultural rules would be a mistake. A person’s geographic location is a broad proxy for a complex mix of social expectations and personal mobility.
National borders do not perfectly align with psychological traits, such as a preference for independence or a desire for group harmony. Future research could measure specific cultural values directly to see how they relate to relationship decisions.
The samples relied on people who were already registered on online survey platforms. This approach means the participants might not accurately represent the broader populations of their respective countries. Collecting data from more diverse, nationally representative groups could provide a more accurate picture of global relationship trends. It is also possible that translating the survey into local languages slightly altered the meaning of relationship terms, which could influence how participants responded.
The study, “A Cross-National Comparison of Ghosting Knowledge, Attitudes, Intentions, and Behaviors in Friendships and Romantic Relationships Spanning Twelve Countries,” was authored by Gili Freedman and Darcey N. Powell.