If you have recently noticed that your ex has removed you from his Facebook friends, it could be because he has heard about a new somewhat disturbing psychological investigation.
Does your ex want you to be friends? Watch out! Science has a theory
A study published by researchers at the University of Oakland found that people with "dark" personality traits, that is, those who are generally unpleasant, manipulators and exploiters, they were more likely to be friends with former for practical and sexual reasons.
This is how researchers came to these conclusions.First, asked about out of 350 people who gave a lot of reasons to continue maintaining friendship with a former .They divided the reasons into 150 factors that in turn assigned to different categories that included; reliability, sentimentality, pragmatism and sexual access.
For example, "I knew how to listen" would go into reliability or sentimentality ; "I could borrow money" would enter the pragmatism ; and "We could still go to bed from time to time" would enter the sexual access.
Next, the researchers asked another group of about 500 people to evaluate the importance of each of the approximately 150 reasons to continue feeling friends with a former hypothetical. Finally, the group performed 500 personality tests that measured dark personality traits, as well as honesty.
The results showed that the participants who scored higher in the measures of the dark personality, they were more likely to cite pragmatic reasons for maintaining friendship with an ex .Meanwhile, the participants who scored low on honesty and humility were more prone to citing reasons related to sexual access.
These results make sense, since previous research had found that the value of dark personality types used to value sex, the value of money and power, and could be more manipulative.
Other interesting conclusion is that in general At the time, people classified as trustworthy or sentimental obtained the lowest score for pragmatism or sexual access.As for gender differences, men were more likely than women to point out pragmatic factors , and sexual access was an important reason for maintaining friendship with an ex.
The lesson here is not that if you are friends with your ex, it is because he is using you.In fact, if your friendship works well and makes you happy, then you probably do not need to do anything about it. But if you notice that your ex comes back only when he needs something, be careful .It could be a sign that that person is not the most stable or benevolent of your life, and that you would do well to spend less time with this one.
If you liked this topic you cannot miss our article about why for your brain, to burn, and suffer an emotional breakdown, it is “almost” the same
Image: Kalun L and Emilien ETIENNE via Flickr
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