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Research Team
Research Team
Hannah Alvarez
Hannah Alvarez
Psychology and Neuroscience
Erika Rosenberger
Erika Rosenberger
Social Psychology
Our team also consists of our faculty mentor, Dr. Allison Farrell, of the psychology department at Miami University.
Abstract
Abstract
Ghosting is a strategy to end a relationship by cutting off all contact. Though many studies have examined the general experience of ghosting, very few have investigated whether one’s social identity (e.g., gender identity) affects such experiences, such as the motivation to ghost. Because sexual and gender minority people have greater safety concerns due to stigma, they may be more motivated to ghost due to safety reasons. Therefore, we aim to examine whether there are sexual and gender identity differences in one’s motivations to ghost, specifically regarding safety concerns and avoiding confrontation. We predict that sexual and gender minority participants will report greater motivations to ghost due to safety concerns and avoiding confrontations more than participants with majority sexual and gender identities. To accomplish this, participants will be recruited from Prolific, an online recruitment platform, to obtain a diverse, non-college sample. Participants will complete a survey that includes a ghosting motivation scale and other various relevant scales. The results of the proposed study will add to the ghosting literature by examining understudied and underrepresented populations that can be investigated in future research.
Research Questions and Hypotheses
Research Questions and Hypotheses
Research Question:
The research question being addressed in our study is whether there are sexual and gender identity differences in one’s motivations to ghost, specifically regarding safety concerns and avoidance of confrontation, using our various scales and demographics. It is important to examine motivations to ghost because not only has it become a newly normalized form of ending communication, but it can also impact how individuals with marginalized social identities (i.e., gender, sexual orientation) approach ghosting differently. Therefore, one’s minoritized identity status may motivate people to ghost rather than reject a person directly, and thus ghosting may be an adaptive method to end relationships that threaten one’s safety.
Hypothesis:
There will be sexual orientation and gender differences in motivations to ghost based on safety concerns and avoiding confrontation.
Gender differences - previous ghosting literature indicates that individuals motivated to ghost due to safety concerns would consider it a better alternative to rejection as a means of ending a relationship. So, women and nonbinary individuals with minoritized gender identities, who are often faced with safety concerns, will be motivated to ghost due to safety concerns more than men. As for avoiding confrontation, women and nonbinary individuals will be more likely to ghost due to this motivation compared to men, as indicated in previous ghosting research.
Sexual orientation differences - we think that the same sentiment regarding previous ghosting literature also rings true for sexual orientation differences, as folks in the LGBTQIA+ community are minoritized. Individuals who identify as a sexual orientation minority often face safety concerns, so they will be motivated to ghost due to safety concerns more than heterosexual-identifying individuals. As for individuals motivated to ghost due to avoiding confrontation, previous ghosting research has indicated that individuals in the LGBTQIA+ community are more likely to ghost due to this motivation, possibly due to their minoritized status.
Overall, individuals of sexual orientation and/or gender will be more motivated to ghost due to safety concerns and avoiding confrontation compared to men and heterosexual individuals.
Methods
Methods
Participants:
We used Prolific, an online recruitment platform, to collect our data. Specifically, we collected data from 210 participants who were 18 and older, fluent English speakers who reside in the United States.
Procedure:
Participants responded to several scales. First, participants indicated their experience with ghosting by selecting whether they have ghosted someone, have been ghosted by someone, have both ghosted someone and been ghosted by someone, or have neither ghosted someone nor been ghosted by someone.
Then, they responded to the ghosting motivation scale, which consists of 37 items that measure the nine themes of motivations to ghost, including safety concerns and avoiding confrontation. Participants were prompted with the instructions "How much would you be likely to ghost someone instead of breaking up using other methods (e.g. breaking up in person, messaging them, etc.) because..." On a scale of 1 [Strongly Disagree] to 7 [Strongly Agree].
There were nine motivations to ghost included in this scale: easy, too short, safety concerns, mental health concerns, too busy, pressure from others, didn't know how, avoiding confrontation, and avoiding hurting the ghostee (the individual who was ghosted). Safety concerns and avoiding confrontation can be tightly related, as avoiding confrontation could be an effect of having safety concerns. So, building on our hypothesis, participants who identify as women or as a nonbinary gender and participants who do not identify as heterosexual face safety concerns due to their social identity, which could translate to ghosting motivations that center on a concern for their safety or not having to be in a situation where their safety could be threatened.
The survey ended with a demographic questionnaire that included questions about gender and sexual identity. Our population demographics were as follows:
Gender: Man (36.7%), Woman (61.9%), Agender, Genderqueer, Gender-fluid, Non-binary, Questioning or unsure (1%), Prefer not to disclose (.5%).
Sexual orientation: Aromantic Bisexual (.5%), Asexual (.5%), Bisexual (13.8%), Gay (2.9%), Lesbian (.5%), Pansexual (1.4%), Queer (.5%), Questioning or unsure (.5%), Straight (heterosexual; 77.1%), Prefer not to disclose (1.4%).
Findings and Discussion
Findings and Discussion
Findings:
Gender identity did predict differences in safety concerns and mental health concern motivations, but not in avoiding confrontation motivations.
Independent samples t-test results
Safety concerns: t = -2.55, p = .011, d = -.367
Mental health concern: t = -2.19, p = .030, d = -.314
Sexual orientation did not predict differences in safety concerns or in avoiding confrontation motivations. We found that sexual orientation did have significant differences in busyness motivations instead.
Independent samples t-test results
Busyness: t = -2.061, p = .041, d = -.347
Conclusions and Future Directions
Conclusions and Future Directions
Future Directions:
Examine whether who the ghostee is in the ghosting experience plays a role in differences in motivation.
We are currently analyzing the validity of the motivation scale used in this study. We have run correlation analyses between all scales included in our survey and our ghosting motivations scale to assess convergent and discriminant validity. This will determine whether our scale measures the desired ghosting motivations, rather than other related mechanisms.
Limitations:
Our sample included few participants who identified as nonbinary and/or as a sexual orientation minority.
Conclusions:
There were differences in safety concerns and mental health concerns motivations for women, but not in sexual orientation.
We did not see interactions between the two social identities regarding ghosting motivations, meaning that neither gender identity nor sexual orientation impacted the outcomes of motivations found in our analyses.
We expect our results, specifically our unexpected findings regarding sexual identity, to be in part due to our limited sample size of nonbinary and sexual orientation minority participants. However, the sexual orientation analysis overall regarding ghosting motivations demonstrated the expected direction of non-straight participants to be more likely to ghost due to our hypothesized motivations.
The following is an image of our poster presented at the 2026 Undergraduate Research Forum
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
I would first like to acknowledge and formally thank the Doctoral Undergraduate Opportunities for Scholarship (DUOS) administration at Miami University for granting the funding that made this research study possible, and for the guidance to navigate an experience where I was able to pinpoint my why for wanting to not only conduct research, but to become a psychologist.
I would like to thank my unparalleled team that brought me onto this project. To Erika and Dr. Farrell, thank you for trusting me with taking on this role. At the beginning of this school year, I was nervous about embarking on my first experience in a research lab and full of doubt, unsure whether research was something I could handle- or even be good at. Now, I am confident in and eternally grateful for my decision to pursue this opportunity because it has forged meaningful connections with you both and given me invaluable knowledge and skill development across many facets beyond psychological research. So, thank you for taking a chance on a sophomore who could only speak on her passion for research with nothing yet to show for it. To Dr. Freedman and Dr. Powell, thank you for providing a warm welcome and for your individual insights, experience, and research that have enabled us to answer difficult questions. I look forward to the next steps of this project that will allow more collaboration.
Lastly, I would like to thank my Grammy. Everything I do, I do in your likeness- guided by your grace, intention, and optimism.
References
References
Conley, T. D., & Peplau, L. A. (2010). Gender and perceptions of romantic partners’ sexual risk. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 7(2, Part 1), 794–
802. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01598.x
Fedina, L., Bender, A. E., Tibbits, J., Herrenkohl, T. I., & Tolman, R. (2023). Dating abuse and harassment among sexual and gender minority U.S.
college students. LGBT Health, 10(S1), S79–S88. https://doi.org/10.1089/lgbt.2023.0109
Freedman, G., Hales, A. H., Powell, D. N., Le, B., & Williams, K. D. (2022). The role of gender and safety concerns in romantic rejection decisions.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 102, 104368. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2022.104368
Freedman, G., Powell, D. N., Le, B., & Williams, K. D. (2019). Ghosting and destiny: Implicit theories of relationships predict beliefs about
ghosting. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(3), 905–924. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407517748791
LeFebvre, L. E., Allen, M., Rasner, R. D., Garstad, S., Wilms, A., & Parrish, C. (2019). Ghosting in emerging adults’ romantic relationships: The
digital dissolution disappearance strategy. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 39(2), 125–150. https://doi.org/10.1177/0276236618820519
Navarro, R., Larrañaga, E., Yubero, S., & Víllora, B. (2020a). Ghosting and breadcrumbing: Prevalence and association with online dating
behavior among young adults. Escritos de Psicología, 13(2), 46–59.
Navarro, R., Larrañaga, E., Yubero, S., & Víllora, B. (2020b). Psychological correlates of ghosting and breadcrumbing experiences: A preliminary
study among adults. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(3), Article 3.
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17031116
Rosenberger, E. J., & Claypool, H. M. (2023). The impact of gender-exclusive language on women’s anticipated ostracism: A preregistered
replication of Stout and Dasgupta (2011). PLoS ONE, 18(9), e0290709. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290709
Safronova, V. (2015, June 26). Exes explain ghosting, the ultimate silent treatment. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/fashion/exes-explain-ghosting-the-ultimate-silent-treatment.html
Thomas, J. O., & Dubar, R. T. (2021). Disappearing in the age of hypervisibility: Definition, context, and perceived psychological consequences of
social media ghosting. Psychology of Popular Media, 10(3), 291. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000343
Timmermans, E., Hermans, A.-M., & Opree, S. J. (2021). Gone with the wind: Exploring mobile daters’ ghosting experiences. Journal of Social
and Personal Relationships, 38(2), 783–801. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407520970287
NACE Career Readiness Competencies
NACE Career Readiness Competencies
NACE Competency #1 - Career & Self-Development
Gaining hands-on, applicable experience in every step of the psychological research process:
I was able to significantly contribute to almost every aspect of the research process of this study. I gained skills that not only centered on the project- like grant proposal and IRB proposal writing, data analysis with real participant data- but also improved my professional development as a psychology student with future goals that align with implementing the research process frequently and effectively.
I was also able to build on skills that I would consider personal weaknesses. I have now gained experience with higher-level technological interfaces that I had not yet used as a psychology student, but would be critical to navigate effectively as a researcher. In addition, I have gained time-management skills that reflect a better understanding of the balance between school, extracurriculars, social life, and self-improvement.
NACE Competency #2 - Critical Thinking
Using ghosting literature to make educated decisions when faced with uncertainty:
I was able to draw on previous literature developed by the research team and the broader field to make decisions about which scales to include in our survey and develop explanations for the results of the data analyses.
NACE Competency #3 - Professionalism
Demonstrating adaptability, dependability, and effort in each of my tasks:
The research process has been a labor-intensive experience that I have dedicated nearly the entire academic year to. There have been tight deadlines, tasks I have never done before, and a team of psychologists with expectations of me. By communicating effectively via email and in-person and/or virtual meetings, consistently meeting deadlines regardless of the turnaround, and having a passion for collaborating and conducting psychological research, I have been able to meet (and hopefully exceed) the expectations of my team and even myself.
NACE Competency #4 - Technology
Effectively navigating new software systems prevalent in research, like Qualtrics, Prolific, SPSS, and PowerPoint:
I used all of these systems for crucial aspects of our study. Qualtrics was used to create the study's survey; Prolific was the platform used to recruit participants and collect data; SPSS was the statistical software used to analyze the data and interpret our results; and Microsoft applications like PowerPoint and Excel were used to analyze and interpret the data and create the poster.
Research Compliance Protocols
Research Compliance Protocols
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) with their Expedited (Level 2) Review for Research Involving Human Subjects.
Our study is IRB approval #02474r
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