Psychologists simulate ghosting—and reveal why it’s so damaging

A new study published in Personal Relationships has found that ghosting—cutting off communication without explanation—can lead to emotional pain on par with being explicitly rejected. But unlike direct rejection, ghosting leaves people clinging to emotional ties and pursuing contact, highlighting how the ambiguous nature of ghosting can prolong distress and impede closure.

The research, led by Amanda L. Szczesniak and colleagues at Wayne State University, aimed to experimentally test the emotional and behavioral impact of ghosting in the early stages of a romantic relationship. While previous studies have explored ghosting using participants’ memories, this study is among the first to simulate ghosting in real-time and compare it directly to explicit rejection and acceptance.

“People often discuss ghosting as a hurtful, distressing way to end a relationship, which inspired us to explore what makes this relationship dissolution experience particularly impactful for the recipient,” explained Amanda Szczesniak, a PhD candidate.

“There is a growing field of informative work examining ghosting. However, this research often relies on retrospective reports. We hoped that by using an experimental rejection paradigm, we could better understand what makes ghosting a unique experience through strengthening our causal inferences and gaining insight into how ghosting feels in the moment.”

To better understand the immediate psychological effects of ghosting, the team created an immersive online dating simulation and measured participants’ real-time emotional responses and behavioral intentions.

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Across two studies, participants were guided through a hypothetical dating scenario. Each person imagined meeting someone named Taylor through a dating app, exchanging messages, and going on two successful dates. Participants then sent a message expressing interest in seeing Taylor again and were randomly assigned to receive one of three responses: an enthusiastic reply (acceptance), a message declining further contact (explicit rejection), or no response at all (ghosting).

The researchers then measured participants’ emotions, self-esteem, emotional attachment to the fictional partner, and their intentions to reconnect or monitor the partner’s online presence.

In the first study, 243 college students participated. After the rejection manipulation, those who were ghosted or explicitly rejected both reported increased negative emotions and lower self-esteem compared to participants who were accepted.

However, ghosted participants retained higher emotional attachment to the dating partner than those who were directly rejected. They were also more likely to check the partner’s social media and consider reaching out after 24 hours—behavior that resembled the accepted group more than the rejected one. The ghosted group’s inability to let go of the connection pointed to a unique kind of emotional limbo.

The second study, a preregistered replication with 141 participants, confirmed these findings. Participants once again went through the same dating scenario and were assigned to one of the three outcomes. As in the first study, both ghosted and explicitly rejected participants experienced similar drops in positive emotion and self-esteem, and both felt worse than those who were accepted. However, ghosted participants once again reported significantly more emotional attachment than the explicitly rejected group.

The second experiment expanded on the first by including additional behavioral measures. Participants rated how likely they were to perform actions such as texting or calling the target, checking their dating app profile, or visiting places the target was known to frequent. Those who were ghosted expressed a higher likelihood of monitoring the target’s online activity and a desire to re-engage socially—even if indirectly—similar to those who had been accepted. In contrast, participants who were explicitly rejected were more likely to avoid further contact.

These findings support the idea that ghosting triggers a unique emotional experience: high emotional pain without the closure needed to move on. Although being ghosted did not cause more negative emotion than being directly rejected, it did lead to more lingering attachment and uncertainty. In both studies, ghosted participants were more likely to report they did not know where they stood in the relationship and were unsure if the connection had truly ended.

“Ghosted individuals exhibited similar negative emotions as those who were explicitly rejected,” Szczesniak told PsyPost. “However, being ghosted was also linked to continued emotional attachment to the romantic target, and, in one study, to a similar degree as those who were accepted. Those who were ghosted also reported higher intentions to contact the target as time passed, along with higher monitoring of the target’s social media.”

“Given that past work has shown that continued contact with an ex-partner hinders break-up recovery, especially for those who have low acceptance of the break-up (e.g., Sbarra & Emery, 2005; Mason et al., 2012), ghosted participants are at risk for slower psychological recovery from the dissolution. Altogether, being ghosted appears to be uniquely associated with sustained emotional attachment, continued contact attempts, and social media monitoring of an ex-partner, suggesting why explicit dissolution might be the most efficacious strategy for establishing the finality of a relationship.”

But as with all research, there are caveats to consider.

“One major limitation of this work is the hypothetical nature of the rejection paradigm,” Szczesniak noted. “Participants imagined a relationship developing over time with a simulated partner that they knew was hypothetical. The task aimed to simulate real-life relationship development by providing sequential scenarios and visual aids (e.g., text messages, choosing dates to go on).”

“However, ethical concerns arise if experimental designs deceive participants into believing they are forming an actual romantic connection over time. Hence, the hypothetical nature was necessary for use in an experimental design to infer causality, and complements previous correlational, retrospective studies.”

Despite its limitations, the study offers important insights into the psychology of modern dating. The findings suggest that ghosting is more than just a silent breakup—it is a rejection that leaves people suspended between hope and heartbreak.

The authors hope that future research can move beyond hypothetical simulations to capture real-time experiences of ghosting. One possibility is using smartphone apps to track communication patterns and emotional responses as they unfold. This would allow researchers to determine when people begin to suspect they are being ghosted and how they attempt to cope with that uncertainty.

“The field would benefit from gathering real-time data while ghosting is happening to capture the temporal aspects of ghosting (e.g., at what point do people suspect they are being ghosted? Do individual differences like attachment orientations play a role in how ghosting differs from other break-up strategies?),” Szczesniak explained. “Also, although most people acknowledge ghosting is not an ideal dissolution strategy, it remains common. What specific factors motivate ghosting over other more direct strategies to initiate a break-up?”

The study, “Give Up the Ghost: Emotional and Behavioral Responses to Ambiguous Rejection,” was authored by Amanda L. Szczesniak, Mary E. Pierce, and Stephanie S. Spielmann.