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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?”
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
