Western Morning News (Saturday)
Friendships can be worth revival effort
IT’S that time of year. Do I send Christmas cards or not? I get rattled by the price of stamps, the sheer waste of paper as we rip off the envelopes and chuck them in the bin – why not have Christmas postcards so we don’t have waste paper?
Anyway, as I’m getting onto my bah humbug soap box, I have to stop for a moment. Getting an unexpected letter or card from friends that have drifted off the radar is always lovely. There’s no doubt that sending a Christmas card can reignite friends and family who live far away.
Should we wait for Christmas to catch up with old friends? The pandemic has done its darndest to keep us apart and many of us, I’m sure, find ourselves wondering if too much water has done under the bridge to try to rekindle a friendship.
The answer, according to research done in the USA, is that it most definitely isn’t. Many people, it seems, fear their friends will find it strange to be sent a message to catch up, so don’t bother.
We should, though. Researchers from Pittsburgh, New Jersey and Kansas found, in a recent study, that most of us hugely appreciate contact from a friend, particularly “after a prolonged period of not interacting with them.”
Apparently the more surprising the message, the greater the pleasure in receiving it – even if it’s friends who you lost touch with a long time ago. In one experiment, reported in The Times recently, 109 participants were asked to send a note with or without a small gift to someone they hadn’t seen for a while.
Those sending the notes “significantly underestimated” how much their reach-outs were appreciated “compared to how much responders appreciated them”, the researchers found.
We’ve all experienced that in one way or another. I remember bumping into an old and close school friend on a zebra crossing outside Charing Cross station. We’d lost touch as we both moved round the world – but that meeting bonded us again and it was wonderful. I’m still in touch with friends I knew in my infant school and our journey from children, sharing family knowledge, through to mature women has stayed strong and very precious.
Interestingly, the study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says that participants were asked to recall a time they had sent or received a message to an old acquaintance and asked to rate how pleasant they had found the contact from an old friend and how pleased the recipient of their own message had felt.
Those people who recalled reaching out to an old friend thought the gesture was significantly less appreciated than those who recalled receiving a communication from a long-lost buddy.
Hardly surprising, really. Humans are social creatures but, even so, getting in touch with someone after a long period can be a bit daunting – I mean, does Cath want to hear from me after all these years? Will she reject me?
The answer, according to the results of the experiments, is a robust underestimation of how much other people appreciate being reached out to.
It’s particularly important to maintain or reignite friendships because they don’t come easily. Another survey asked 2000 British adults about friendships and how they had evolved. About 66% said they were actively looking to add new friends to their inner circle. The study reckoned that it actually takes about 34 hours of socialising to form a solid friendship, ideally spread out over nearly six months.
So making friends doesn’t happen overnight. Robin Dunbar, emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, is best known for arguing that most people are capable of having around 150 meaningful acquaintances. He analysed results of the survey, commissioned by cough sweet company Fisherman’s Friend.
“Friendships are the single most important factor influencing both our psychological and our physical health and wellbeing,” he said. “The study suggests that two thirds of us have a best friend who provides emotional support and advice when we need it most. This makes finding and maintaining friendships all the more important.”
So what makes a good pal? Well, someone who provides emotional support and advice when we need it most is vital, according to science journalist Rhys Blakely. He says “most people appear to have a particular set of qualities in mind when seeking new friends. A sense of humour was seen as essential for 61% of the respondents in the survey. Holding similar values was important to 44%. Trustworthy and reliable came in at about 25%”.
Professor Dunbar reckons that humans have five intimate friends, 15 or so good friends and around 50 social friends and about 150 acquaintances.
The research has made me realise how important our friends are, how easy it is to take them for granted. If I don’t get around to sending Christmas cards to our pals this year, I’ll definitely be picking up the phone for a catch-up. You won’t get rid of me that easily.
The research has made me realise how important our friends are, how easy it is to take them for granted