Time For A Profile Edit: How Facebook Is Telling The World About Your Past Relationships

When you start seeing someone new, it’s common to wonder about their past. How many serious relationships have they had? What were their exes like? Why didn’t it work out?

A new study has revealed that if you want to know the truth about your man’s past relationships, all you have to do is take a visit to his Facebook page.

The ScienceWorldReport reports that Professor Christopher Carpenter from the Western Illinois University Department of Communication was fascinated with the impact that social networking websites like Facebook can have on our relationships. He decided to look into this area and his results are very interesting.

According to Professor Carpenter’s research, the more ex partners someone has – the more interests they tend to list on their Facebook profile.

The research suggests that your interests are directly linked to your exes

As part of the research process, Professor Carpenter asked 276 volunteers about their relationship histories and their social networking profiles. By doing this he found a direct correlation between the amount of ex partners someone had and the amount of interests they listed on their Facebook profile.

“I predicted this relationship because other research suggested that part of romantic relatonship development involves adopting new interests and behaviours from one’s partner,” said Professor Carpenter.

“We can’t follow people around with a tape recorder getting a record of what they say all day. Facebook, on the other hand, offers us the chance to see one part of that record. We can see how often people interact with their romantic partners on Facebook, what they say to each other and how they present themselves on their profiles,” he added.

Hmm... we think it’s about time we did an ‘interests audit’ on our own Facebook profiles...