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Study finds people are surprisingly reluctant to contact old friends; find out why
According to a new study, which tried to find out the dynamics of making contact with a long-lost friend and the factors that keep many of them away, it was found that most people are not very keen on rekindling their friendship. The reason given by most participants is the concern that the friend might not want to talk to them or that it might be awkward to contact them after being apart for a long time. Read on to know more.
Over 90 per cent of people admit they have lost touch with their friends, but aren’t keen to get back in touch with them
Most people who lose touch with their old friends – the ones they grew up with or were best friends with as college students – can never be the same again once they leave them behind. According to a study published by Lara Aknin and Gillian Sandstrom in Communication PsychologyPeople are surprisingly reluctant to meet their old friends, despite the proven benefits of social connections for their mental health. This is especially true as most people drift away from their once-close companions due to various life circumstances.
However, the study suggests there may be ways to bridge this gap again.
the study
According to Aknin and Sandstorm, who conducted a two-part study to find out how interested people are in reconnecting with old friends, it involved more than 500 participants from the UK, US and Canada. Participants were asked how willing they would be to contact their old friend via phone, text or email on multiple occasions, as well as what was stopping them from reconnecting.
Over 90 percent of people admitted they had lost touch with a friend, indicating this is a universal experience. Still, most people said they were not very interested in reconnecting because they worried the friend might not want to talk to them or that reaching out might be awkward for them.
The researchers also found that the self-report nature of this first study may not reflect real-life beliefs and actions, so the other two parts of the study focused on actual behavior.
Why are people not interested in contacting old friends?
In the third and fourth parts of the study, which involved 453 and 604 participants respectively, participants said they had an old friend they would be happy to reconnect with, they had his contact details, and they thought he would want to talk to them. As part of the study, experimenters prompted them to imagine reaching out to said friend with a brief ‘hello’ message.
Only a few people contacted old friends
Despite repeated prompting, only a third of participants contacted each other, researchers said.
So the next few studies looked at why people don’t contact their old friends, and specifically how people view their old friends. One study had 288 participants rate their willingness to engage in eight everyday activities, including texting an old friend or talking to a stranger, and found that participants were just as reluctant to contact an old friend as they were to talk to someone they had never met.
In another, many participants also considered the closeness and familiarity of lost friends, with people less likely to reach out again to those who felt less familiar. According to the researchers, the findings underscore how reluctant we are to reach out to people we were once close to, even when it might feel better to do so.
And so, the next time you wonder if that old friend of yours wants to talk to you, maybe take a chance. You never know what life has in store for you.
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