Everyone who has ever been ghosted while dating can attest that it is not a nice feeling when the other side suddenly turns completely silent. While the fact that ghosting leads to negative emotions has been confirmed by several studies, these were often so-called retrospective studies. This means that the volunteers who participated had to remember the last time they had been ghosted and then answer questions about it. This process is not optimal, as sometimes the last ghosting incident may be a long time ago, so memories may have been distorted positively or negatively.
A new experimental study on ghosting and rejection
Now, a new study entitled “The Phantom Pain of Ghosting: Multi-Day Experiments Comparing the Reactions to Ghosting and Rejection”, just published in the scientific journal Computers in Human Behavior, used an innovative new experimental approach to investigate ghosting (Telari and co-workers, 2025). The research team, led by Alessia Telari of the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy, did not rely on memories of ghosting, but created an experimental situation in which volunteers were either ghosted or rejected by their communication partner. In the first part of the study, 46 volunteers chatted for 15 minutes each day with another person. They were told that the other person was also a participant, but in fact they were an assistant of the researchers. On the fourth day, three things could happen: In the ghosting condition, the assistant just stopped texting the volunteers. In the rejection condition, the assistant told the volunteers they did not want to continue the conversation and then stopped texting. In the control condition, the assistant just continued texting.
In the second part of the study, a similar design was used, but for 9 days. On each day and before and after the experiment, the volunteers filled out several questionnaires regarding how close they felt to the other person, whether they liked the relationship, and which emotions and which needs they felt. Compared to previous studies relying on memories of ghosting events in the past, this design has the huge advantage that the volunteers could be asked about their emotions directly when the ghosting happened.
What did the scientists find out?
Both ghosting and rejection had similar effects on the volunteers compared to the control condition, in which the assistant just continued texting. The closeness and relationship satisfaction the volunteers felt with the assistant dropped rapidly after being ghosted or rejected, while it stayed the same in the control condition. Feelings of rejection and exclusion increased in both the ghosting and rejection conditions. Guilt also increased, but was stronger in the rejection condition compared to the ghosting condition. Interestingly, both rejection and ghosting led to an increase in confusion. While the feeling of confusion stopped soon after the rejection, it stayed continuously high after ghosting, showing that people continued to think about the reasons for the ghosting. Moreover, volunteers felt had an increased feeling of disconnection to other people and felt invisible after both rejection and ghosting. Again, the effects were short-lived for rejection, but persistent for ghosting. Moreover, volunteers felt less sociable and competent but more antisocial after both rejection and ghosting.
What is worse, ghosting or rejection?
To answer the question from the title of this post: According to the results of the study, ghosting is worse than rejection. While both have similar negative effects, the effects of rejection were often more short-lived, while ghosting had long-lasting negative effects on people’s feelings. The scientists argued that the lack of closure and the uncertainty about the reasons for the end of the relationship may lead to higher stress in the ghosting condition.
