A new study in Psychological Science is shedding some interesting light on how people view relationships and what men and women get out of them.
When asked about how relationships influence self-esteem, both men and women claimed that men depend less than women on their relationship status to determine their self-worth.
However, when subjects were asked about their own relationships, the opposite was found: men reported greater reliance on their relationship status for self worth than women did.
In a follow-up study, participants were asked by researchers to imagine and describe a breakup. Men more often talked about losing social standing, whereas women were more concerned with a loss of connection and companionship.
Obviously, any study like this is about men and women in general and if you insist that you’re an outlier, we’ll believe you . . . but we’ll suspect that your girlfriend is reading over your shoulder.
