Psychology of Social Connection

As eager freshmen we ran around campus finding new friends, congregating in the dining hall, hanging out in tiny common rooms, avoiding proctors and hiding drinks – it was easy to meet people and form these friendships. But now, we click between class links and our friends are little boxes on Zoom, hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Despite being in a pandemic, those friendships still remain, and someday we’ll be face to face again. So, we’re going to tell you why friendships are important and how to maintain friendships both in ~real life~ as well as during COVID. Now, we’re going to tell you how to leverage the building blocks from Unit I to remind you of what’s important in forming friendships, as well as help you and those friendships survive Zoom U.

Imitation — James

A bunch of tiny boxes assorted on a screen doesn’t exactly foster the best environment in which to make friends, but welcome to Zoom U 2020. Although our current situation is certainly not ideal, there are still many ways in which we can form and maintain strong friendships.

Science suggests that proximity is a major factor in the formation of friendships (Nahemow, & Lawton 1975).  Proximity to others often leads to self-disclosure as a result of familiarity. Alas, our college experience has been ripped from us, and most of us are no longer in proximity to… well, basically anyone.  But, not to worry, the proximity of our faces on a screen may be just enough to get us through this.

The first tip in our Zoom U Survival Guide is to understand imitation and mimicry. When Jen says that imitation is a building block of social connection, she ain’t kidding!  Many studies have been done showing that mimicry leads to more pleasant interactions and the formation of social bonds (Stel & Vonk, 2010).  With the pandemic limiting our social interactions, it is more important than ever to make the most out of the limited facetime, no pun intended, that we have with each other.  Although it may seem silly, imitation can still occur over Zoom! Facial expressions are amplified on Zoom, so use this to your advantage! In order to create social bonds, maybe try to mimic facial expressions with break-out room members, just don’t be weird about it. It may seem uncomfortable or awkward but according to a bunch of smart people, it really does work.

It is important to remember that mimicry often occurs subconsciously.  If you’re like me you can remember many times where you have either mimicked another’s behavior or been mimicked in a natural way and this imitation led to conversation, and yes a ~social bond~.  So, stop worrying! Although it may seem as if we are completely isolated, humans tend to have a way of figuring out the whole friendship thing.  Zoom will not beat us. But, keep reading because there are many other building blocks of social connection that can assist us in forming friendships.

Mind Perception — Christi

Mind perception is super important to connection and communication in friendships. In Ledbetter, Griffin, and Sparks’ word-game study, interpersonal mindfulness and theory of mind were strong predictors of friendships (Ledbetter et al., 2007). While it may be more difficult to infer others’ thoughts and emotions through a screen, your friendships are not doomed on Zoom.

The challenge of perspective taking – seeing what your friends are experiencing at home from behind your screen is nearly impossible. More than ever try to ask questions and be interested in the answers! Get context about where your friends are, what they have been up to, co-ruminate, and get all the deets.

Body language is still important and can help emulate the proximity you would have during a real life conversation. Show your friends that you are interested in what they have to say, and are actively listening and contributing to the conversation and the relationship. Eye contact is another way to connect with people. A study also found that virtual eye contact is just as important as real life eye contact, triggering autonomic arousal and other facial/emotional reactions (Hietanen et al., 2020). These emotional reactions can be cues for what our friends are thinking about and how they feel.

Videos on Zoom make us hyper-self-aware, constantly looking at our little box to see what we look like and how others see us. While it may make you anxious, try to avoid it – checking yourself out divides our attention and distracts us from the conversation at hand. People who looked at themselves more during video calls were less certain when recalling information about their partners (Miller et al, 2017). So keep your video on, look at your friends (not yourself!), and be engaged!

But we get it, zoom fatigue is REAL. At the end of a day of screen time it is so hard to engage in more interactions. Plus, scheduling time with people is hard, and it is so easy to drift off and check your email or be on your phone when talking to friends. But remember, your friends are so important and social connection is really fulfilling (you won’t regret catching up with friends every now and then, promise!). Even if it’s just a quick 10 minutes, give your full attention to your friends like you would in real life.

Empathy — Gracie

Last but not least in the friendship survival guide is… empathy. It’s 2020, and being emotionally available and woke is cool. So, I want to propose a way to use empathy in friendships, in whatever way they are taking form (@Zoom).

I think that the construct of empathy is a goal – not a default. Empathy doesn’t seem to be a one-trick pony, that we either use or do not use in socialization. Instead, I think that empathy is what happens when you learn to ~healthily~ balance multiple aspects of interacting with another person and their emotions in a meaningful way (hence the reason I called it a “construct”). Empathy in excess can lead to us constantly carrying someone else’s emotional baggage, which is no bueno for mental health. But without empathy, we might be unresponsive to others’ feelings, which can make us come off as cold, lame, or like we don’t care.

So somewhere in the middle of this mess is a great ratio of: acknowledging someone’s emotions (good or bad), recognizing that sometimes it isn’t your responsibility to help rectify someone’s emotions, all the while, remembering that they aren’t your emotions, and someone else’s problems don’t automatically become yours. This is what empathy is to me. So when you’re looking to make a friend, remember the difference between being emotionally “available” and emotionally “vulnerable.”

“Sure Gracie, but that’s easier said than done.”

I know. But in my experience with close relationships, the WRONG kind of empathy can act as a vicious cycle. A friend vents to you, you feel bad for them, you take on that friend’s emotions, and now you’re feeling down. And when you’re feeling down, you can’t offer the same healing powers to your friend that you might have been able to, had you been a little more emotionally resilient. Suddenly you can’t be the distraction or the good laugh, the cuddler or the “show them a good time”-er (LMK if you figured out how to cuddle via Zoom). A finding in this week’s paper might show evidence of this – when assessing what aspects of interpersonal mindfulness could act as mediators for influencing friendship quality, perspective-taking was a significant explanatory mediator, but empathy (defined as literally taking on one’s emotions) was not (Pratscher et al, 2018). This might mean that a friendship does well  with empathy in moderation. Too much, and you’re a vibe killer, always harshing the mellow. Too little, and you’re a jerk whose stuck in the early 2000s, when not caring was cool.

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While we might have thrown a lot of stuff at you, if you take one thing from this post, it’s this: while consciously thinking about skills like imitation, mind perception, or empathy might certainly help you be engaged in socialization, when you’re making friends, it’s also important to follow your heart (so much cheese I know I’m SORRY – Gracie). But seriously, you’ll have that gut feeling when a new relationship is going well, is healthy, and can become really meaningful (if it isn’t already). And the right people will bring the best out of you. Friendship is an organic process, and life has a funny way of bringing people together. So don’t give up on the whole online interactions thing yet!

Love,

James, Christi, & Gracie

References:

Hietanen, JO, Peltola, MJ, Hietanen, JK. Psychophysiological responses to eye contact in a live interaction and in video call. Psychophysiology. 2020; 57:e13587. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13587

Ledbetter, A.M., Griffin, E. and Sparks, G.G. (2007), Forecasting “friends forever”: A longitudinal investigation of sustained closeness between best friends. Personal Relationships, 14: 343-350. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6811.2007.00158.x

Matthew K. Miller, Regan L. Mandryk, Max V. Birk, Ansgar E. Depping, and Tushita Patel. 2017. Through the Looking Glass: The Effects of Feedback on Self-Awareness and Conversational Behaviour during Video Chat. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 5271–5283. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025548

Nahemow, L., & Lawton, M. P. (1975). Similarity and propinquity in friendship formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(2), 205–213.  https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.32.2.20

Pratscher, S. D., Rose, A. J., Markovitz, L., & Bettencourt (2018). Interpersonal mindfulness: Investigating mindfulness in interpersonal interactions, co-rumination, and friendship quality. Mindfulness, 9(4), 1206-1215.

Stel, M., & Vonk, R. (2010). Mimicry in social interaction: Benefits for mimickers, mimickees, and their interaction. British Journal of Psychology, 101(2), 311-323.