Your friends want to hear from you more than you think

You think of an old friend. You go to send a message, then hesitate. It's been months. Will it be weird? Do they even want to hear from you? You put the phone down.

According to a set of studies published in 2022, that hesitation is mostly wrong.

The research

Peggy Liu, SoYon Rim, Lauren Min and Kate Min ran 13 experiments with more than 5,900 participants, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology under the title The Surprise of Reaching Out: Appreciated More Than We Think.

In the first, people recalled times they had reached out to someone, or someone had reached out to them. In later ones, participants actually sent a short note, or a note with a small gift, to someone in their social circle they hadn't been in touch with for a while. Senders rated how much they thought the other person would appreciate it, and the people receiving it rated how much they actually did.

The result held across every experiment: people who reached out significantly underestimated how much it was appreciated.

Surprise makes it better, not weirder

The most useful finding is about surprise. We tend to worry that an out-of-the-blue message is awkward. The researchers found the opposite. People receiving a message focused on the surprise more than the senders did, and that surprise was linked to more appreciation.

The gap between what senders expected and what receivers felt was biggest when the contact was unexpected, and when the two people weren't especially close. In other words, the exact situations where we hesitate most are the ones where reaching out lands best.

Turn the message into a plan

A "thinking of you" message is good. A message with a plan in it is better, because time together is what actually keeps friendships alive (more on that in It takes about 200 hours to make a close friend).

Some low-pressure ways to do it:

• Invite them to something already happening. "We're doing a braai Saturday, come through" is easier to say yes to than "we should catch up sometime."
• Be specific. A day, a time, a place. It's easier to answer, and it signals you actually mean it.
• Let it be small. Coffee for an hour counts. So does a walk around Zoo Lake.

If they can't make it, that's fine too. Research on declined invitations suggests people are far more understanding about a "no" than we expect, which we cover in It's okay to say no.

So send the message. The odds are good that it means more to them than you think.

Sources

• Liu, P. J., Rim, S., Min, L., & Min, K. E. (2023). The surprise of reaching out: Appreciated more than we think. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(4), 754–771. Summary from the American Psychological Association.