Not sure if you should reach out to your friend? Well, recent study from Journal of Personality and Social Psychology recommends you do.
The study involved over 5,900 participants over two different experiments, exploring how accurate people are at estimating how much people would appreciate their efforts to contact them and how others received being reached out to.
For the first study, half the participants were asked to recall the last time they reached out someone in their social circle “just to say hi” or to “just to catch up”. The other half were to remember the last time they were reached out for that reason. The were then asked to indicate on a 7-point scale how much either the recipient appreciated the gesture or how much they appreciated by reached out to, respectively. The found that those who did the reaching out rated gesture meant less than those who rated their appreciated having been reached out to.
In a second experiment, researchers participants sent a short note or a note with a small gift to a friend they have not interacted with in a long time. Participants rated the extent for which they felt the recipient would appreciate the gesture on the same prior 7-point scale. The researchers then asked the recipients to rate their appreciation. And once again, those who initiated the communication though the recipient would appreciate the gesture less compared to how the recipient really felt.
They also found the bigger the surprise, the more the recipient appreciated the gesture.
“I sometimes pause before reaching out to people from my pre-pandemic social circle for a variety of reasons. When that happens, I think about these research findings and remind myself that other people may also want to reach out to me and hesitate for the same reasons,” said author, Peggy Liu. “I then tell myself that I would appreciate it so much if they reached out to me and that there is no reason to think they would not similarly appreciate my reaching out to them.”
So what are you waiting for, reach out to that friend you haven’t spoken to in a while and don’t lose good people in your life.
PJ Liu et al. The surprise of reaching out: appreciated more than we think. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000402
