In an article earlier this year I wrote about research highlighting how we often underestimate the desire of others to receive constructive feedback.

“People often have opportunities to provide others with constructive feedback that could be immediately helpful, whether that’s letting someone know of a typo in their presentation before a client presentation, or telling a job candidate about a stained shirt before an interview,” the researchers say. “Overall, our research found that people consistently underestimate others’ desire for feedback, which can have harmful results for would-be feedback recipients.”

Reaching out

A second study, from the University of Pittsburgh, suggests we’re similarly clueless in terms of our estimations of just how much friends welcome us making an unexpected call, text, or email to say hello.

“People are fundamentally social beings and enjoy connecting with others,” the researchers explain. “There is much research showing that maintaining social connections is good for our mental and physical health. However, despite the importance and enjoyment of social connection, our research suggests that people significantly underestimate how much others will appreciate being reached out to.”

The researchers conducted a number of experiments featuring nearly 6,000 participants to gauge how good we are at estimating how welcome an attempt to connect might be. For instance, in one experiment participants were asked to recall the last time they reached out to a friend for no other reason than to catch up, whether via phone, email, or text. Half of the participants recalled them reaching out to a friend, the other half recalled when a friend reached out to them.

They were asked to rank on a 7-point scale how thankful, grateful, or appreciated they felt. The results show that people who did the reaching out would consistently underestimate how the gesture would be appreciated.

Feeling appreciated

This general finding was consistently found across all of the experiments, although the researchers did discover one interesting variable that appeared to affect how much an individual appreciated being reached out to.

“We found that people receiving the communication placed greater focus than those initiating the communication on the surprise element, and this heightened focus on surprise was associated with higher appreciation,” they explain. “We also found that people underestimated others’ appreciation to a greater extent when the communication was more surprising, as opposed to part of a regular communication pattern, or the social ties between the two participants were weak.”

At a time of increased loneliness in which we may have lost touch with others in our lives, it might be worth re-initiating contact with them again, even after a prolonged period. The researchers accept that this may feel somewhat daunting and perhaps even unwelcome, but they hope that their research will highlight how unnecessary these concerns often are.

“I sometimes pause before reaching out to people from my pre-pandemic social circle for a variety of reasons. When that happens, I think about these research findings and remind myself that other people may also want to reach out to me and hesitate for the same reasons,” they conclude. “I then tell myself that I would appreciate it so much if they reached out to me and that there is no reason to think they would not similarly appreciate my reaching out to them.”