People are surprisingly reluctant to reach out to old friends, Nature study finds

Over a decade ago, Sheila Brownell was going through a challenging time and lost touch with a close friend. She saw her a few times in the succeeding years but the interactions were brief. Brownell missed her best friend: “She’s always just been that one person.” 

That’s why when she was prompted to reach out to an old contact at an event run by her local chamber of commerce, she figured it would be the perfect opportunity to reconnect. Still, she was nervous. A lot of time had passed. Did her friend still want to talk? Would she shut her down? 

Brownell recalled one of her favorite mottos: “The answer to every question you don’t ask is no.” She sent the message: “Hey, let’s get together soon … I think about you a lot.” By the time the workshop ended, she already had a response: “Yes, me too. Let’s still do it.”

“It’s been like a weight lifted off my heart,” Brownell told CBS News. “It feels stupid that I waited so long.”

Brownell’s experience is not uncommon. People are surprisingly reluctant to reach out to old friends, a new Nature report found, despite the proven benefits of social connection. 

“People don’t understand how powerful our relationships are with other people,” said GenWell founder Pete Bombaci, who spoke at the event Brownell attended.

Lara Aknin and Gillian Sandstrom, the two researchers who led the Nature study, originally set out to examine what situations would prompt people to reach out to old friends. Their hunch was people might be more inclined to message old contacts on specific occasions, like birthdays, or the start of the New Year. 

What they found stunned them. “We thought that would work, but in turn, we realized just nobody wanted to reach out to old friends,” Aknin said.

While people were interested and even willing to reach out, they were hesitant to make the first move. They worried whether their old friend would have time for the connection, or if they would have anything to talk about. But the biggest barrier, the researchers found, was fear the friend wouldn’t want to hear from them.

“I think it does kind of boil down to fear of rejection, fear of the other person not really being interested,” said Sandstrom.

It was difficult to pin down where this reluctance stemmed from, but one possible explanation the researchers came up with was that old friends may feel like strangers, especially as more time passes. In one of their studies, they found people were no more willing to reach out to an old friend than they were to talk to a stranger.

Sandstrom said a useful way to look at old friends could be “strangers with history.” We may feel like we don’t know them, but we have shared experiences to fall back on.

The researchers tried multiple tactics to encourage participants to get over the hump of sending a message. “We thought that we could rationalize people into giving this a try,” said Aknin. “I was repeatedly surprised by how difficult this was to encourage [people].”

The only thing that seemed to work was asking participants to send a few warm up messages to current friends. People who did this were more likely to reach out to old friends than those who did not.

“Practicing the behavior involved in reaching out to others reminded people of how simple it is to send a message and how enjoyable it can be to connect,” Aknin and Sandstrom wrote in an article for Scientific American.

Bombaci’s advice for those who need a little nudge: Remember there is no long-term commitment. He also recommended setting up a recurring meeting on your calendar with the person you want to see.

“What the research shows is if we do this more frequently, we gain confidence, and when we gain confidence, that allows us to build more connection,” he said.

While Aknin and Sandstrom didn’t explicitly study the role of social media in staying connected, they told CBS News  they thought online platforms could both hurt and help attempts to rekindle old friendships.

One of their findings was participants were more likely to reach out to someone if they had some working memory of who they are, and what’s going on in their lives. 

“Social media pages at least keep us abreast of what’s going on in people’s lives,” said Aknin. “I can imagine before, it was out of sight, out of mind.”

Aknin said while social media offers a channel for reconnection, it can also create a “misabused perception” we’re more in touch than we actually are. 

“Digital technology is critically important, but what we need to help people understand is it can’t be the only connection that you make,” said Bombaci.

Regardless of the medium, what it really boils down to is not being afraid to make the first move, the researchers said. 

“People kind of hope that the other person will reach out to them,” said Sandstrom. “So maybe this is a reminder that someone’s got to go first, but why not you?”