Ghosting—cutting off all communication with someone without providing an explanation—causes more long-term psychological suffering than outright rejection. A team of researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of Milan-Bicocca conducted this study, which was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. The study, titled "The Phantom Pain of Ghosting: Multi-day experiments comparing the reactions to ghosting and rejection", is the first to look at how people react to ghosting in real time, after prior research that relied on memory or imagination. The team of psychologists from Milan-Bicocca employed an experimental method in conjunction with daily questionnaires to investigate the evolution of individuals' psychological responses to ghosting in comparison to explicit rejection. This research challenges the widely held belief that "disappearing" is a more delicate method of ending a relationship, especially in short or shallow ones. The intention was not to investigate the end of a romantic relationship, but rather reactions to the sudden and irreversible end of human communication, a type of digital social exclusion. Indeed, the authors see ghosting as a sort of ostracism—being ignored or excluded—that can occur in any context, whether romantic, friendly, or professional. Study participants had brief daily conversations with a partner (a study collaborator) and completed a daily questionnaire on their emotions and perspectives. Halfway through the experiment, some participants were suddenly ignored, simulating an episode of ghosting, while others received an explicit rejection or continued to communicate normally. This novel approach made it possible to track the day-by-day evolution of emotional distress and demonstrate how the prolonged silence of ghosting produces more lasting effects than direct rejection. "Both phenomena elicit negative responses and threaten fundamental psychological needs, but ghosting traps people in a state of uncertainty that prevents emotional closure", says Alessia Telari, a researcher at Milan-Bicocca University's Department of Psychology. The findings demonstrate that the end of a relationship is painful regardless of how it occurs. Nevertheless, explicit rejection induces an intense emotional response that is both immediate and brief, followed by a gradual recovery. Ghosting, on the other hand, causes people to be in a state of prolonged uncertainty and confusion, making it difficult to fully process the experience and sustaining high negative feelings such as pain and a sense of alienation. Moreover, those who are ghosted tend to view the other person as less moral than those who are explicitly rejected.