Photo: One day when drinking your morning coffee, you’re reminded of a friend of your past. You haven't talked to this person in a while, but you remember them fondly and wonder what they’re doing. You select your phone and “Hello!” To say, start typing the message just before sending the message before sending. Has so ever happened to you? If so, you are usually not alone.
Past research in our lab has shown that as much as 90 % of individuals report one “.Old friend” – A friend whom he cares but with whom he has lost the touch. And most individuals say that they wish to re -connect with an old friend, only 30 % are willing to send a message, even despite favorable conditions, as these relationships haven’t ended on bad terms, people think their friends wish to contact their friends or their friends.
It is astonishing to succeed in old friends because a significant institution of research shows that social relations are a powerful predictor Health And Happiness. Indeed, one Big And More diverse The social network is said to maximum welfare.
Note
So what makes someone more prone to reach an old friend?
In our new researchWe investigated this query in two ways. First, we inspected what people express within the “reach” note to an old friend, and what could predict some content to which notes were sent. For example, are people more prone to send notes with more attention to the past, present or future?
To learn, we analyzed greater than 850 notes that we collected in previous studies. The necessary thing is that every one the participants wrote their note keeping in mind a particular old friend and got the chance to send their note, however the participants could decide to opt out. This allowed us to analyze whether the notes sent notes contained different content in comparison with the notes that weren’t sent.
Each note was coded on greater than 20 theoretically related dimensions resembling the length of the note, the presence or absence of non-public memories. In particular, 12 of those dimensions were analyzed by a pc software called Linguistic inquiry Word Count (LIWC) Which can easily and objective information resembling counting words, time -based (past, present or future) and positive and negative emotions.
In addition, a team of trained human codes reviewed each note. The Human Coding Team focused on 13 more sailic and complicated topics that may sometimes be obscure a pc, including whether the writer has shared specific memories of his old friend or the writer has claimed responsibility for fading friendship.
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Invisions information
After all this, we still couldn’t predict which notes were more prone to be sent. But our coffee coding efforts revealed many interesting things in regards to the content of the notes. For example, messages to old friends were often positive and current.
We used statistical regression analyzes to take a look at the connection between different features and behaviors of the note – only six were necessary by way of statistics. However, these necessary relations were small and contradictory in our two partners.
This shows that the contents of the arrival notes can’t be predicted who chooses to send their message and who doesn’t.
That arrives
With a slight insight from the contents of the notes that arrived, we focused our attention to asking: Who is more prone to reach an old friend?
We have recruited 312 participants in campuses and public places around town to finish the survey. The questionnaire began to ask participants to discover an old friend. This old friend was the one that cared about it, but he didn’t talk for long, which he thought would love to listen to from him and someone for whom he had contact information.
Subsequently, the participants answered quite a few questions on themselves, including their happiness, loneliness, personality, friendship and friendship beliefs.
Near the top of the survey, we asked the participants whether or not they were willing to succeed in their old friend, after which we gave them two minutes to arrange a brief note that they’d previously identified. After the top of two minutes, we asked the participants whether or not they had sent their message to their old friend.
Like past research, 34.2 % of the participants selected to reach. And while some dimensions and other variables of personality have predicted how the participants said they might reach an old friend, only a variable – “friendship flexibility” – predicted whether people had sent their message to their old friend.
The concept of friendship flexibility refers to the assumption that friendship can stay even after a protracted time of dialogue, and now it’s something we’re reading in our lab.
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Make a jump
If an old friend's considering re -crosses your mind, don't be too stuck to arrange the proper message – just get!
For example, you possibly can arrive when a restaurant is playing a song that you just each enjoyed otherwise you see a meme that reminds you of them, or simply a straightforward “, hey, too long! How are you?”
Our searches make it clear that hesitating to succeed in old friends shouldn’t be experienced by a form of person, and the notes that are usually not sent are followed by a form of script.
Hesitating to succeed in an old friend is a typical experience, which suggests that almost all people may have the opportunity to accomplish that in the event that they are willing to leap to accomplish that. Feeling this may encourage people to feel that they’re able to take step one to re -contact.