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.

    愛情喜劇一直被視為最適合第一次約會時看的電影。

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

    研究人員稱，愛情喜劇并非無害，它會讓人對現實的愛情產生不現實甚至可能不健康的期待。

    研究人員發現，看愛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鐘情，而不太相信兩人之間的感情需要經營。

    研究發現，只看一場愛情喜劇就足以影響人們對于愛情的態度。

    研究負責人布阿恩•赫爾姆斯說：“我們并不是在掃興，并不說大家不應該看這些電影，而是想強調，人們在看這些電影時應帶著清醒的頭腦和批判的眼光，這才不會受其影響。”

    問題是盡管多數人知道那種完美的愛情不現實，但一些人還是無法擺脫其影響。

    在研究的第一部分，來自愛丁堡赫爾特•沃特大學家庭與個人情感實驗室的赫爾姆斯博士及其同事對1995年至2005年的40部票房大片進行了研究，其中包括《電子情緣》、《愛上新郎》、《曼哈頓灰姑娘》和《二見鐘情》等。

    其中多數影片都講述了男女主角一見鐘情的故事，宣揚了“緣份天注定”的愛情觀，即你注定和某一個人有緣。

    赫爾姆斯博士說：“這些愛情劇中都有‘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名學生志愿者觀看2001年由凱特·貝金塞爾和約翰·庫薩克主演的影片《緣份天注定》，同時讓另外100人觀看大衛·林奇導演的一部影片。

    之后的調查問卷顯示，看了《緣分天注定》的學生對于命運和宿命的信奉程度大大超過看現實主義電影的人。

    第三次研究發現，愛看浪漫愛情喜劇的人對于緣份的信奉遠超過其他人。

    Vocabulary:

    killjoys:掃興的人

    David Lynch:大衛-林奇是當代美國電影界的一個多面手，既是著名的編劇、導演，又是優秀的電視制作、攝影師、漫畫家、作曲家和書畫刻印藝術家。他在主流派和超現實主義之間保持著一種游刃有余的平衡，在銀幕上無情地揭露了現實生活中黑暗和極端暴力的一面，使作品散發出獨特的個人魅力。與同時代的電影制作者相比，他得到了廣泛的認同。