Turns out there may be a scientific explanation for why that girl you knew in high school airs her dirty laundry on Facebook.
“People who [create drama] have a natural propensity to have a negative response to the stressors of life that others are able to cope with,” Ph.D. student Scott Frankowski tells The Post. He and fellow researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso devised a quiz to measure a person’s need to create drama.
On a scale of 1 to 7, rate each statement below with how much you agree, where 7 is the most in agreement. Here’s a sampling of the 12 questions:
1. Sometimes I say something bad about someone with the hope that they find out what I said.
2. I say or do things just to see how others react.
3. I always speak my mind but pay for it later.
4. It’s hard for me to hold my opinion back.
5. People who act like my friends have stabbed me in the back.
6. People often talk about me behind my back.
Scoring 5 or more on each of the first two questions reveals a need for “manipulating people in a self-serving manner,” Frankowski says. Questions 3 and 4 measure impulsive outspokenness — like social-media oversharing — while the final two measure the degree to which you feel victimized by “life’s circumstances.” The three combined are the main traits of perpetuating drama, Frankowski claims.
After administering more than 500 quizzes, Frankowski found that the need for drama decreases with age. Even so, he adds: “When a person’s drama is consistently stressful, and negatively impacts their quality of life … they may have a clinical personality disorder and should seek the services of a professional.”