Uganda, May 9 -- Is he or she the one? You know; the one to introduce to my parents, the one to move in with, the one to start a family with, the one to marry? At some point in every dating relationship, you ask yourself some version of these questions.

Of course you are invested in predicting the fate of your own relationship. Psychology researchers are interested as well. Are there recognisable signs that can foretell where a relationship is headed?

Typically, researchers have tried to puzzle out this question by measuring some aspect of a relationship at one moment in time and then seeing how that measurement coincides with relationship outcomes months or years later. For example, one group found that greater boredom now predicts les...