Ghosting: people who stop replying often feel worse than others think

Anyone who suddenly goes silent in a chat is quickly seen as indifferent. A new study suggests that this is often not the case: people who "ghost" often feel worse about it than those they ignore assume. The work by Sophia Li and Juliana Schroeder (Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley) and Coral Zheng (Judge Business School, University of Cambridge) was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin; the specialist outlet PsyPost presented it on 13 October. The research looked at ghosting mainly between casual acquaintances and strangers rather than in romantic relationships.

In a first survey, 195 adults recalled a time when they had ghosted someone online or had been ghosted themselves. On a scale of 1 to 5, ghosters rated how bad they had felt at 2.27 on average – those ghosted estimated it at just 1.56. In a second experiment with 601 participants who imagined the situation, even a short reply such as "Sorry, but I can't talk right now" clearly narrowed the gap. Zheng advises people who have been ghosted to bear in mind that "the person who hasn't responded probably feels worse than you expected"; those who want to go silent themselves should "maybe consider sending a short reply before going silent".

Limitations: a third, live experiment with 229 pairs of chat partners, 175 of which were analysed, did not confirm the overall effect; it appeared only in a post hoc analysis, not planned in advance, among participants who actually perceived the behaviour as ghosting. All participants lived in the US, and the chats were brief and between strangers – the results cannot simply be applied to ghosting by a partner or close friend. Neither the manuscript nor the PsyPost report gives information on funding.