In the film Serendipity John Cusack leaves it to fate to decide if Kate Beckinsale is the woman for him

    They have long been regarded as the perfect movie for a first date.

    But according to a study, romantic comedies such as Bridget Jones’s Diary and Notting Hill could be bad for your love life.

    Rather than being harmless entertainment, ‘rom-coms’ give people unrealistic – and potentially unhealthy – expectations about real-life relationships, scientists say.

    Researchers found that those who watched romantic comedies were more likely to believe in predestined love than those who preferred other genres of movie.

    They were also more likely to believe that perfect relationships happen instantly, and were less likely to believe that couples need to work at relationships.

    Watching just one romantic comedy is enough to sway people's attitudes to romantic love, they found.

    Dr Bjarne Holmes, who led the research, said: ‘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.

    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 realize.’

    For the first part of the study, Dr Holmes and colleagues at the Family and Personal Relationships Laboratory at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, studied 40 box office hits from 1995 to 2005 including You’ve Got Mail, The Wedding Planner, Maid in Manhattan and While You Were Sleeping.

    Most of those comedies depicted couples falling instantly in love and promoted the idea of fate – the notion that there is just one perfect mate out there, they found.

    ‘There’s a notion of destiny and couples in romantic comedies immediately understand each other,’ said Dr Holmes. ‘If you think that’s how things are, you are setting yourself up to be disappointed.’

    In a second study, Dr Holmes asked around 100 student volunteers to watch Serendipity – the 2001 romantic comedy starring Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack, while 100 watched a David Lynch drama.

    In a questionnaire after the film ended, students watching the rom-com were far more likely to believe in fate and destiny than those who had watched the ‘straight’ film.

    A third study found that fans of romantic comedies had far stronger beliefs in predestined love.

    愛(ài)情喜劇一直被視為最適合第一次約會(huì)時(shí)看的電影。

    但一項(xiàng)研究顯示，看浪漫愛(ài)情喜劇如《BJ單身日記》和《諾丁山》等，不利于你的感情生活。

    研究人員稱(chēng)，愛(ài)情喜劇并非無(wú)害，它會(huì)讓人對(duì)現(xiàn)實(shí)的愛(ài)情產(chǎn)生不現(xiàn)實(shí)甚至可能不健康的期待。

    研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，看愛(ài)情喜劇的人比看其它題材影片的人更相信“緣份天注定”。

    此外，他們更愿意相信一見(jiàn)鐘情，而不太相信兩人之間的感情需要經(jīng)營(yíng)。

    研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，只看一場(chǎng)愛(ài)情喜劇就足以影響人們對(duì)于愛(ài)情的態(tài)度。

    研究負(fù)責(zé)人布阿恩•赫爾姆斯說(shuō)：“我們并不是在掃興，并不說(shuō)大家不應(yīng)該看這些電影，而是想強(qiáng)調(diào)，人們?cè)诳催@些電影時(shí)應(yīng)帶著清醒的頭腦和批判的眼光，這才不會(huì)受其影響。”

    問(wèn)題是盡管多數(shù)人知道那種完美的愛(ài)情不現(xiàn)實(shí)，但一些人還是無(wú)法擺脫其影響。

    在研究的第一部分，來(lái)自愛(ài)丁堡赫爾特•沃特大學(xué)家庭與個(gè)人情感實(shí)驗(yàn)室的赫爾姆斯博士及其同事對(duì)1995年至2005年的40部票房大片進(jìn)行了研究，其中包括《電子情緣》、《愛(ài)上新郎》、《曼哈頓灰姑娘》和《二見(jiàn)鐘情》等。

    其中多數(shù)影片都講述了男女主角一見(jiàn)鐘情的故事，宣揚(yáng)了“緣份天注定”的愛(ài)情觀，即你注定和某一個(gè)人有緣。

    赫爾姆斯博士說(shuō)：“這些愛(ài)情劇中都有‘命定’的因素，影片中的男女主角也都‘心有靈犀’。如果你相信這些東西，等于是自尋煩惱。”

    在第二次研究中，赫爾姆斯博士讓約100名學(xué)生志愿者觀看2001年由凱特·貝金塞爾和約翰·庫(kù)薩克主演的影片《緣份天注定》，同時(shí)讓另外100人觀看大衛(wèi)·林奇導(dǎo)演的一部影片。

    之后的調(diào)查問(wèn)卷顯示，看了《緣分天注定》的學(xué)生對(duì)于命運(yùn)和宿命的信奉程度大大超過(guò)看現(xiàn)實(shí)主義電影的人。

    第三次研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，愛(ài)看浪漫愛(ài)情喜劇的人對(duì)于緣份的信奉遠(yuǎn)超過(guò)其他人。

    Vocabulary:

    killjoys:掃興的人

    David Lynch:大衛(wèi)-林奇是當(dāng)代美國(guó)電影界的一個(gè)多面手，既是著名的編劇、導(dǎo)演，又是優(yōu)秀的電視制作、攝影師、漫畫(huà)家、作曲家和書(shū)畫(huà)刻印藝術(shù)家。他在主流派和超現(xiàn)實(shí)主義之間保持著一種游刃有余的平衡，在銀幕上無(wú)情地揭露了現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中黑暗和極端暴力的一面，使作品散發(fā)出獨(dú)特的個(gè)人魅力。與同時(shí)代的電影制作者相比，他得到了廣泛的認(rèn)同。