Take a look at the contact list on your phone. Chances are that you have dozens of names and numbers, but you’re in touch with only a small subset of those people on a regular basis. Sure, some dormant entries may be functional, such as those for veterinarians or car-repair shops. But some contacts are probably friends who have faded from your life for no particular reason. Whether it be the childhood friend who had a baby, the colleague who transferred to a new department or the thoughtful neighbor who moved away, many of us can think of someone we care about but with whom we have lost touch.
Research from across the social sciences has consistently shown for decades that social relationships are critical for our mental and physical health. Indeed, having at least one person to count on in times of need is one of the top predictors of life satisfaction around the globe. As a result, we may expect people to go to great lengths to maintain their social connections. Yet some inevitably wane, transforming active friendships into dormant contact-list entries.
In a paper published in Nature Communications Psychology, we examined how many people have an old friend whom they care about but have lost touch with and how willing they are to reach out to this person. In a series of seven studies conducted with more than 2,400 participants, we discovered that people are surprisingly reluctant to reconnect, although there are strategies for overcoming that feeling.
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Social relationships are a key source of happiness, but they fade for any number of reasons.
We began by asking 441 university students in Canada whether they had someone with whom they had lost touch and, if so, how willing they were to call, text or e-mail this person now and in the future. An overwhelming majority (91 percent) identified such a connection. People were neutral about the idea of contacting this person in the future, however, and even less willing to do so at the time.
To explore this hesitation, we asked the same people about various barriers to reaching out. These participants had many concerns, but they worried most that their old friend might not be interested in hearing from them and that it would be awkward to speak after so much time had passed. In other words, people seemed to worry about being an imposition in their friend’s life. This worry is most likely unfounded; research shows that friends we’ve lost touch with appreciate hearing from us more than we think.
In fact, we discovered that if people could get past their worries, they were indeed interested in reconnecting. When we asked 199 young adults to think about either getting in touch with an old friend or hearing from one, they preferred the latter. It’s not that people are uninterested but rather that they are reluctant to initiate these interactions.
So we conducted two experiments with more than 1,000 people to see whether we could encourage them to call or write to an old friend. This proved surprisingly tricky even though we tried to make it as easy as possible. We recruited only people who were able to think of an old friend whom they wanted to reconnect with and who they thought would be happy to hear from them. Moreover, we made sure that participants had their friend’s contact information, and we gave them a few minutes to draft a message.
Despite these favorable conditions, fewer than a third of people sent the message. Yet people who did reported greater feelings of happiness immediately afterward than those who didn’t.
In addition to providing a supportive context, we tried to make the task even easier for people in several different ways. We told some of our participants not to overanalyze the situation and just press “send.” We encouraged others to take their friend’s perspective and think about how much they would appreciate receiving a note from an old friend. We tried to downplay the fear of rejection by suggesting that participants should not expect to receive a response and instead should feel good about having performed an act of kindness by sending a message.
None of these interventions were successful. Nothing we tried seemed to move the needle on the number of people who would reach out to an old friend. We were stumped—until we realized that many obstacles participants identified when thinking about the task were similar to the ones that prevent people from talking to strangers.
This similarity made us wonder whether the passage of time makes old friends feel like strangers. So we tested this idea. In one study, we asked 288 people how willing they were to engage in various everyday actions, such as picking up garbage, booking a dentist appointment, listening to a favorite song from childhood and, critically, talking to a stranger. Sure enough, people were no more willing to reach out to an old friend than they were to pick up garbage or talk to a stranger.
But here is the good news: one of us (Sandstrom) has worked on an intervention shown to ease anxieties about conversing with strangers. We decided to adapt that approach—which entails practicing specific social interactions—to the case of reconnecting with old friends. We asked some of our study participants to complete a three-minute warm-up exercise in which they sent messages to current friends and acquaintances. Meanwhile others—our control group—simply scrolled through social media. Afterward we encouraged everyone to contact an old friend. Only about a third of people in the control group sent a message, consistent with our previous experiments. But about half the people in the warm-up group did so. We think that practicing the behavior involved in reaching out to others reminded people of how simple it is to send a message and how enjoyable it can be to connect.
Social relationships are a key source of happiness, but they fade for any number of reasons. That said, reaching out may lead to greater happiness and may be easier after warming up. So go through the contact list on your phone and message a few folks you talk to often—and then find someone you haven’t spoken to in a while and have been missing and try to get hold of them, too.
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