Boasting about your relationship on Facebook is key to keeping your lover

That is the conclusion of a new study, which looked at how 180 undergraduates projected their relationships online.

According to a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, people who are most vocal about their significant others on Facebook are more likely to stay with partners.

The research was published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, And Social Networking, and was released online last week, reports Bloomberg.

The students surveyed, who were all in couples, initially answered questions about their age, sex, length of relationship, and level of commitment.

They were then asked to log into their Facebook accounts to allow researchers to record the number of photos they had posted with their partners and whether they had specified that they were 'in a relationship' 

The students were also asked how many times each person in the couple wrote on the other's wall in the last month, and the number of mutual friends they shared.

Six months later, the couple were asked if they were still going out with each other.

The evidence overwhelmingly showed that those couples who posted a lot of photos with their partners were more likely to be deeply committed and still together.

Catalina Toma and Mina Choi, the co-authors of the study, wrote: 'These publicly posted cues likely induced participants to perceive themselves as part of a romantic unit, thus cementing the relationship.'

Their theory is that couple who publicly confirm their romance deepen their bond by doing so.

This is because people like to live in a way that is consistent with how they are viewed by others.

Mutual friends and posts on each other's wall did not produce the same correlation as posting photos of each other online.

(dailymail.co.uk)