It can cut like a knife, or make your brown eyes blue. It's romantic rejection, and a new study finds big differences in how men and women give would-be partners the brush-off.

When it came to the reasons cited most often for turning someone down, men and women were different on every one of them.

Almost all of us have been on either the dispensing or receiving end of the "big dump." The results of a US poll, published February 3, 2002 in USA Today, found that nearly half of American adults -- 46% -- admit they have gotten the romantic heave-ho at least two to three times during their lifetime, while 22% say they've broken the news to between 6 and 10 significant others.

But while lots of studies have investigated what attracts people, very few have investigated the reasons why people leave each other.

In three separate studies involving nearly 500 adults, researchers had individuals recall their reasons for -- and methods of -- romantic rejection. Levels of contact ranged from rebuffing an unwanted come-on, saying no to a date, or ending a long-term relationship.

Overall, they collected 124 reasons that we got from people and they put them into scales like physical attractiveness, material worth, biographical information, demographics.

Some examples of the most common reasons behind rejection included "unattractive," "unlikely to prosper financially," "no car," "rude," "poor personality" or "just wasn't fun."

The researchers found that women are more likely to have reasons, or to be more discriminating in all of those categories compared with men. Women were reluctant to reject someone solely on the basis of their looks.

Not so for men, however. Men are much more likely to either reject someone -- or not -- based on physical attractiveness.

On the up side, the researchers report that the oft-heard "It's not you, it's me" line can sometimes be true.

When it came to the methods used for turning down prospective dates or severing relationships, people were more likely to lie than anything else. Common 'little white lies' included making up excuses, citing other plans or lying about availability.
People were most likely to give a would-be suitor a flat "no" when approached for sex. In these situations a simple refusal was fine, even to the point of sounding mean. Failing that, many resorted to other tried-and-true tricks, such as ignoring the person or giving out a false phone number.

Just how blunt a person might be in rejecting another will probably vary between individuals, and research is ongoing into "individual differences in personality, self-esteem and other components.

Annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Savannah, Georgia February 1, 2002