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Same class, same time, every week
Repetition does the work that school used to do. The more often someone sees the same people, the more familiar the place feels and the easier it becomes to say hello. A run club, a gym class, a book club, a volunteer organization for a cause that matters to someone, or a career workshop all bring the same people back together.
The activity has to be something the person actually likes. Joining a yoga class purely to make friends, while hating yoga, breeds resentment that shows. A run club suits people who love running, and book clubs, which are making a comeback, suit people who love reading.
The supermarket doesn't work, because the odds of bumping into the same person there week after week are slim. A class that meets at the same time gives people a natural context for conversation, and even talking to just the instructor starts the habit of being known somewhere.
Why does seeing the same faces build liking?
In 1968, psychologist Robert Zajonc showed participants nonsense words, character-like symbols, and photographs of faces, varying how many times each one appeared. The more often an item had been shown, the more favorably participants rated it. Zajonc called the pattern the mere exposure effect. It has since been replicated with many kinds of stimuli, including faces of strangers.
Why does group exercise bond people so fast?
In a 2010 study in Biology Letters, Emma Cohen, Robin Dunbar, and colleagues measured pain tolerance in Oxford University rowers. Rowers who trained in synchrony with a crew showed higher pain thresholds afterward than rowers who trained alone, a result researchers link to endorphin release. Dunbar has proposed that endorphins are part of a brain system that helps primates, including humans, form social bonds.
Why do casual acquaintances matter?
In 1973, sociologist Mark Granovetter published The Strength of Weak Ties in the American Journal of Sociology. In his study of professional and managerial workers in a Boston suburb, people who found jobs through personal contacts more often heard about them from acquaintances they saw only occasionally than from close friends. Acquaintances move in different circles than close friends do, so they carry information the close circle already lacks. The paper became one of the most cited in sociology.
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