Hearing from an old friend you’ve lost touch with can be a pleasant surprise, and reviving those old friendships can be extremely fulfilling. Psychologists have long noted the benefits of more friendships and more diverse friendships. But according to a new study by psychologists from Simon Fraser University and University of Sussex, we often hesitate to initiate those reconnections.
The study included seven large surveys of almost 2,500 participants. Over 90 percent of participants in the first survey could think of a particular friend with whom they had lost touch and would like to speak with again. However, even when participants expressed wanting to reconnect, thought the friend would be appreciative, and were given time to draft a message, only about a third actually sent the message.
To understand this reluctance, the researchers had participants in another survey rate their willingness to complete various tasks at that moment, including reaching out to a friend they had lost touch with, talking to a stranger, eating an ice cream bar, and picking up a garbage bag. Participants were about as willing to reach out to an old friend as they were to start a conversation with a stranger—or to pick up a bag of garbage.
The researchers then tried to encourage connection by mentioning previous research showing messages from old friends tend to be well-received. But this intervention did little to ease reluctance, and the number of participants who sent messages remained low.
“We came to the conclusion that trying to change people’s minds might not be the best strategy,” says Lara Aknin, psychologist at Simon Fraser University and lead researcher on the study. “Instead of changing people’s minds, we really tried to change their behavior.”
Practicing the art of friendship
Their new approach had participants practice with a “warm-up”: One group spent three minutes writing messages to current friends and acquaintances, while another group spent three minutes browsing social media. Then, everyone was asked to draft and send a message to an old friend.
The practice task proved successful: 53 percent of those who “warmed up” ultimately sending the message—a two-thirds increase over those who had not “warmed up.” Only 31 percent of those in the social media group reached out to an old friend.
So why is this such an obstacle that we need to warm up to overcome? Over time, old friends can start to feel like strangers, explains Aknin. That psychological distance is what people report as their main hurdle to reconnecting.
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The type of relationship two friends had before losing touch can also determine how difficult this distance feels to bridge, according to Giuseppe Labianca, psychologist at University of Massachusetts Amherst, who was not involved in the study. A previously close relationship with a lot of trust makes picking up where you left off more likely and lessens the fear of rejection.
Our fear of rejection and awkwardness may be making us overly cautious, says Aknin.
Ultimately having more—and more diverse—social connections is good for us. That’s why during the social isolation of the early COVID-19 pandemic, many people stuck at home were reaching out to old friends, what Labianca refers to as “dormant ties.”
“In a lot of cases, part of the reason a tie grows dormant is because people move away, their interests diverge, and so they lose track of other people. But if you think about it, that’s what makes running into someone you haven’t seen in a long time so helpful and so interesting,” says Labianca. “Their lives have diverged, so you might hear about something new and cool and different.”
Staying connected on social media
Social media might make reconnecting with dormant ties easier, while in other ways making our connections less deep. Since the new research found familiarity makes reaching out easier, social media could provide a resting baseline of more familiarity. “People are still crossing our minds, or at least crossing our feeds,” says Aknin.
But Labianca says while social media might foster keeping up with old friends on a surface level, fully reactivating an old tie calls for a real conversation: A phone call or a face-to-face interaction, reacting to each other in real time.
If you want to reach out to an old friend but are feeling hesitant, Aknin points out you’re not the only one—in fact, you’re in the majority. A warm-up like in the study can help, says Aknin. She suggests getting in the groove of sending messages to current friends, then changing the recipient’s name to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while and hitting send.
People will probably appreciate it more than you expect. Peggy Liu, psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the new study, found that we tend to underestimate how much other people in our lives appreciate us reaching out. “Surprise tends to amplify how we feel… So on the recipient end, when they’re reached out to, those feelings of surprise really amplify that appreciation.”
“People fear that the other person is going to not want to reconnect,” says Labianca. “Most of this is in our own heads, and if you did reach out, you’d be surprised by how excited people would be to reconnect. And it’s worth doing.”
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