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When you first arrange to meet a girl you’ve picked up, you might decide to go to the cinema and watch a movie together. However, according to new research, you could be wise to avoid going to see a romantic comedy.
Rom-coms have been blamed by relationship experts at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh for promoting unrealistic expectations when it comes to love, since they often promote a warped sense of the “perfect” relationship within society.
Researchers noted the films contain improbable plots, unlikely happy endings and false philosophies. They also oversimplified the process of falling in love and wrongly gave the impression that love could and should be achieved without any effort.
Psychologist Dr Bjarne Holmes and his team spent a year analysing 40 top box office rom-coms released between 1995 and 2005, including “You’ve Got Mail“, “The Wedding Planner“, “Maid in Manhattan” and “While You Were Sleeping“; from which they identified common themes that they believed were unrealistic, such as the idea of “the one” soul mate who we are all pre-destined to meet and that they should instinctively know us so well they can “almost read our minds”.
Using this information, they surveyed hundreds of people with a questionnaire which asked respondents to describe their beliefs and expectations when it came to relationships.
The researchers found that those respondents who watched romantic comedies often failed to communicate effectively with their partners, and frequently held the view that if someone is meant to be with you, they should know what you want without you needing to tell them. They were also more likely to believe that perfect relationships happen instantly, and were less likely to believe that couples needed to work at relationships.
Dr Holmes, who led the research, said:
Marriage counsellors often see couples who believe that sex should always be perfect, and if someone is meant to be with you then they will know what you want without you needing to communicate it.
We now have some emerging evidence that suggests popular media play a role in perpetuating these ideas in people’s minds.
The problem is that while most of us know that the idea of a perfect relationship is unrealistic, some of us are still more influenced by media portrayals than we realise.
In a follow-up experiment, the researchers discovered that watching just one romantic comedy is enough to sway people’s attitudes towards romantic love – The Psychologists had 100 student volunteers watch the 2001 romantic comedy “Serendipity” (starring Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack) whilst a further 100 watched a David Lynch drama – Following the viewings, students who watched “Serendipity” were found to be more likely to believe in fate and destiny.
Dr Holmes emphasized:
We are not being killjoys – we are not saying that people shouldn’t watch these movies. But we are saying that it would be helpful if people were more aware and more critical of the messages in these films.
We all want to be successful in our relationships. We want to be the special one and meet the special one. Unfortunately people tend to believe the Hollywood idea of a perfect relationship.
That is just unrealistic. People feel if their relationship is not like a Hollywood film then it is not any good.
Investing time and energy [into a relationship] are not themes that are popular in Hollywood films.
In order to find out more, the researchers have launched a much larger, international study about the effects of the media on relationships.
They are asking people to participate by answering questions about personality, relationships, and media consumption habits by filling out a questionnaire which can be found here.
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Posted by Jonathan in Art & Literature, Psychology