However, research suggests such fears are unfounded, with recipients often being far more grateful than the sender might expect. Additionally, the study shows that the more surprising a message or small gift is, the more appreciated the recipient feels. “Many people have lost touch with others in their lives, including many friends. Despite wanting to reconnect, I think many people are reluctant to do so,” said Dr. Peggy Liu, of the University of Pittsburgh, the study’s lead author. “These findings suggest that their hesitations may be misplaced, as others are likely to appreciate that they are communicating more than people realize.” Liu said the team started their research because they felt many people were losing touch with each other more and more. “We wondered why that might be,” he said. Writing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Liu and her colleagues report how they investigated the issue by conducting a series of experiments, based on hypothetical and real-life scenarios, involving more than 5,900 participants. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST In one experiment, 54 participants wrote a note to a fellow college student with whom they had not been in contact for a while. This note was sent to the latter by the researchers, who asked both the writer and recipient to indicate how much they appreciated the message. The results show that on average senders rated receivers’ appreciation at 5.57 on a seven-point scale, while recipients themselves rated their appreciation at 6.17. The team said this and other experiments revealed that people who receive messages value them much more than the sender expects. Further experiments suggested that the degree of this mismatch is linked to how surprising the contact is. When the team ran thought experiments in which they expected to be given a hypothetical message or gift, they found no difference between the sender’s view of how much they would appreciate and that reported by those imagining the situation as the receivers. “One reason this undervaluation happens is that people who are thinking about reaching out don’t think about how positively surprised others would feel when they are approached,” Liu said. But Liu said questions remain. “Although we show that people typically underestimate how much others value being reached out to, an outstanding question remains how we can actually motivate people to reach out more to others,” he said. Stephen Reicher, professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews, who was not involved in the work, said the results made sense. “Feeling connected to others has consistently been shown to be good for our physical and mental health. “Indeed, there’s a whole new literature on what’s called ‘social healing’ showing that such connections can be extremely effective in everything from protecting against depression and preserving cognitive abilities in the elderly to recovering from heart attacks,” he said. , adding that just feeling part of a team was just as effective. Reicher suggested that Covid has highlighted the need to help people connect. “If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we have a loneliness pandemic that is causing enormous damage and we need to address it urgently as a public health issue,” he said. “Finding ways to connect people has to be a priority.”
