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Vague plans fizzle new friendships
Why plans fizzle
The common mistake with a new acquaintance is waiting too long to see them again. In that stretch of time, the spark can fizzle out.
Sometime is a vague point in the future. Everyone says we should hang out, and the phrase often stands in for it was nice to meet you. Said and meant, it has to be followed through on.
Making it specific
The fix is a specific plan. Someone met while playing softball gets invited to the batting cages the following week.
The step before the plan is a request for contact information, so there is a way to reach out at all. Asking for it right after a good conversation, and then proposing the specific outing soon after, keeps the momentum from the first meeting alive.
How many hours does a new friendship take?
Jeffrey Hall, a communication researcher at the University of Kansas, surveyed adults who had recently moved to a new city. His 2018 paper in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships estimated that about 50 hours together turns an acquaintance into a casual friend. Reaching the level of friend took roughly 90 hours. Reaching a close friend took more than 200 hours.
Why do specific plans get followed through?
Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer studied what he called implementation intentions, which are plans that name when and where something will happen. A 2006 meta-analysis by Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran covering 94 studies found that such plans had a medium-to-large effect on whether people reached their goals. A set time and place turns the plan into a response to a cue, so it does not have to be decided again each time. The pooled effect size across those studies was 0.65.
How do shared activities ease first meetings?
A 2014 study in Psychological Science by Erica Boothby and colleagues had pairs of strangers taste chocolate side by side. People rated the chocolate as more intense when the stranger was tasting at the same moment than when the stranger was doing something else. The researchers called this a shared-experience effect. It held even when the two people never spoke.
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