Silent treatment best way to deal with jerks

Researchers at City University of New York, have claimed that it's mentally healthy to abruptly end a conversation with someone obnoxious than to continue speaking with them.

Lead author Kristin Sommer, associate professor of psychology at Baruch College in New York, told Canadian wire service Postmedia news that it is depleting for people to force themselves to have difficult conversations when all they want to do is ignore the person.

She said that ostracism could serve the regulatory goal of allowing people to conserve resources.

Sommer and her co-author, Juran Yoon, pulled information from two studies and nearly 120 people, in which participants were asked to talk to another person and act either "highly likeable (polite and egalitarian) or highly unlikeable (rude and bigoted) acquaintance."

The participants were then taken to a private room to complete a task.

Researchers concluded that participants performed badly in the task after ignoring a likeable person, and performance was better when they used the silent treatment on an offensive person, CBS News reported.

The study has been published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

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