This One Habit Is Ruining Your Social Life

Find out why you’re no longer enjoying time with friends.

Find out why you’re no longer enjoying time with friends.

Smartphones are killing the simple pleasure we can take from socialising.

Research finds that people enjoy socialising with friends and family more if they avoid using their smartphones.

Using smartphones during a dinner with friends led people to feel more distracted and to enjoy the experience less.

Surprisingly, people who used their smartphones during lulls in the conversation reported feeling more bored.

Score one point for old-fashioned conversation.

Mr Ryan Dwyer, the study’s first author, said:

“As useful as smartphones can be, our findings confirm what many of us likely already suspected.

When we use our phones while we are spending time with people we care about — apart from offending them — we enjoy the experience less than we would if we put our devices away.”

In the research 300 people went to dinner with friends and family at a restaurant.

Half were randomly assigned to keep their phones in their pocket, while the other half kept them on the table.

They were interviewed afterwards to see how much they had enjoyed the meal.

Mr Dwyer explained that people were slightly more bored with their phones out, which was surprising:

“We had predicted that people would be less bored when they had access to their smartphones, because they could entertain themselves if there was a lull in the conversation.”

Another study tested other situations by sending a group of over 100 people text messages five times a day to report how they were feeling and what they were doing.

Once again, people enjoyed socialising with others more if they were not using their phones as well.

Professor Elizabeth Dunn, study co-author, said:

“An important finding of happiness research is that face-to-face interactions are incredibly important for our day-to-day wellbeing.

This study tells us that, if you really need your phone, it’s not going to kill you to use it.

But there is a real and detectable benefit from putting your phone away when you’re spending time with friends and family.”

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (Dwyer et al., 2017).

These 2 Personality Types Are The Most Compatible

People have a romantic type, study demonstrates.

People have a romantic type, study demonstrates.

People choose romantic partners who have similar characteristics to themselves, a study of over 1,000 people has found.

They go for similar personality, intelligence levels and levels of education.

So, the most compatible personality types are similar personalities.

When it comes to physical characteristics, people also seem to have a ‘type’.

For example, women who like attractive, dominant, masculine men tend to have ex-partners who fit the same profile.

The conclusions come from a study in which people were asked about their current and ex-partners.

The results showed that people choose partners who are similar to themselves in many different ways.

Dr Paul Eastwick, the study’s first author, said:

“Do people have a type?

Yes.

But sometimes it reflects your personal desirability and sometimes it reflects where you live.”

Dr Eastwick explained that some of the similarities between ex-partners were down to being brought up in the same area:

“A second study examined the ex-partners of several hundred young adults sampled from schools across the United States.

The exes of a particular person tended to be very similar on variables like education, religiosity, and intelligence, but this type of similarity was entirely due to the school that people attended.

Within their local school context, people were no more or less likely to select educated, intelligent, or religious partners.”

However, locality cannot totally explain why birds of a feather flock together — people are on the lookout for something similar, every time.

The study strongly refutes the received notion that opposites attract.

Far from it: opposites repel!

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Eastwick al., 2017).

This Emotion Builds Stronger Families — And It Can Be Taught (M)

This simple act can drastically reduce your parenting stress and relationship satisfaction.

This simple act can drastically reduce your parenting stress and relationship satisfaction.

Keep reading with a Membership

• Read members-only articles
• Adverts removed
• Cancel at any time
• 14 day money-back guarantee for new members

One Word That Could Save Your Relationship

Couples who use this word rate their marriages as higher quality.

Couples who use this word rate their marriages as higher quality.

“Thanks” is the one word that will save your your relationship.

Couples who express gratitude to each other rate their marriages as higher quality, a study has found.

Expressing gratitude also reduces the likelihood of divorce, the researchers found.

Gratitude is particularly powerful at overcoming repetitive arguments.

The key is feeling appreciated by your spouse and acknowledging when they have done something nice for you.

Dr Ted Futris, study co-author, said:

“We found that feeling appreciated and believing that your spouse values you directly influences how you feel about your marriage, how committed you are to it, and your belief that it will last.”

For the study, 468 couples were asked about the quality of their marriages and how they expressed their gratitude to each other.

The results consistently showed the power of gratitude, said Dr Allen Barton, the study’s first author:

“It goes to show the power of ‘thank you’.

Even if a couple is experiencing distress and difficulty in other areas, gratitude in the relationship can help promote positive marital outcomes.”

One particularly dangerous negative pattern is called ‘demand/withdraw’, Dr Barton explains:

“Demand/withdraw communication occurs when one partner tends to demand, nag or criticize, while the other responds by withdrawing or avoiding the confrontation.

Although wife demand/husband withdraw interactions appear more commonly in couples, in the current study we found financial distress was associated with lower marital outcomes through its effects on increasing the total amount of both partners’ demand/withdraw interactions.”

Gratitude was effective at breaking through this negative pattern, said Dr Futris:

“Importantly, we found that when couples are engaging in a negative conflict pattern like demand/withdrawal, expressions of gratitude and appreciation can counteract or buffer the negative effects of this type of interaction on marital stability.”

Dr Futris continued:

“All couples have disagreements and argue.

And, when couples are stressed, they are likely to have more arguments.

What distinguishes the marriages that last from those that don’t is not how often they argue, but how they argue and how they treat each other on a daily basis.”

The study was published in the journal Personal Relationships (Barton et al., 2015).

There’s Something Very Strange Happening To Modern Friendships

Modern societies are often highly mobile, with people moving around for work, school or just to start afresh.

Modern societies are often highly mobile, with people moving around for work, school or just to start afresh.

People in modern societies tend to move home frequently, which is damaging to the nature of their friendships.

Research finds that moving regularly is linked to thinking that friendships and close social ties are more disposable.

Unfortunately, without strong social ties to friends and family it is harder to feel safe and secure.

Similarly, moving around a lot is also linked to the same attitude of disposability towards objects.

Dr Omri Gillath, one of the book’s authors, said:

“We found a correlation between the way you look at objects and perceive your relationships.

If you move around a lot, you develop attitudes of disposability toward objects, furniture, books, devices — basically whatever merchandise you have at home, your car even.”

Modern societies are often highly mobile, with people moving around for work, school or just to start afresh.

The research found that the more people have moved around the country, the more they tend to have a disposable view of both objects and close social ties.

Dr Gillath said:

“This isn’t a new idea of the United States as a mobile country — for many people here, moving up means moving around.

If you’re willing to move for school or a job, you have a higher chance of being successful.

But we’re saying it also makes things superficial and disposable.

It might be fine to have disposable diapers but not disposable friendships.

If you know you’re moving and develop the idea that everything can be replaced, you won’t develop same strong and deep ties.

We’re suggesting this is a broad phenomenon where we all tend to look at relationships to co-workers, friends and social network members as replaceable.

Even in romantic relationships, when I ask my students what would they do when things get difficult, most of them say they would move on rather than try to work things out, or God forbid, turn to a counselor.”

These kinds of attitudes can be psychologically unhealthy, Gillath thinks:

“Research suggests only deeper high-quality ties provide us with the kind of support we need like love, understanding and respect.

You need these very close ties to feel safe and secure and function properly.

If social ties are seen as disposable, you’re less likely to get what you need from your network, which can negatively affect your mental and physical health as well as your longevity.”

The friendship crisis

There’s little doubt that having friends is tremendously good for people.

Those who invest in their friendships experience greater psychological and physical health, particularly among the elderly (Lu et al., 2021).

Despite this, people find it hard to make friends.

Dr William Chopik, an expert on relationships, said:

“In today’s world there’s a general feeling that we’re in a ‘friendship crisis’ in which people are lonely and want friends but struggle to make them.

We show here that they’re beneficial for nearly everyone, everywhere.

But why are they so hard to form and keep?”

It is likely that one of the many answers is that friends are viewed as disposable.

The book is called “Adult Attachment: A Concise Introduction to Theory and Research” (Gillath et al., 2016).

The Attachment Style That Kills A Relationship

Around one in five people have this attachment style.

Around one in five people have this attachment style.

Anxiously attached people tend to bring up old arguments over and over again, research finds.

Recalling old grudges or misdeeds adds fire to new arguments and kills the relationship.

Psychologists call this ‘kitchen sinking’.

Kitchen sinking is throwing everything into arguments, but the kitchen sink.

Anxiously attached people do this partly because they worry that their partners do not care for them.

High levels of attachment anxiety are linked to a fear of abandonment.

People who are anxiously attached are extremely ‘needy’.

Around one in five people have an anxious attachment style.

The conclusions come from a series of studies involving many hundreds of people.

In one, 201 people in romantic relationships were asked about their attachment anxiety and past conflicts.

The results showed that anxiously attached people were more likely to remember old conflicts.

Ms Kassandra Cortes, the study’s first author, explained:

“When memories feel closer to the present, those memories are construed as more relevant to the present and more representative of the relationship.

If one bad memory feels recent, a person will also be more likely to remember other past slights, and attach more importance to them.”

Naturally, remembering past conflicts makes people act more destructively in the moment, with disastrous consequences for the relationship.

However, the study also showed that sweeping conflicts under the carpet was not effective either.

Instead, conflicts need to be resolved as they occur, Ms Cortes said:

“It may be useful for people to resolve an issue with their partner when it occurs, rather than pretending to forgive their partner or just letting it go when they are clearly upset.

This way, the issue may be less likely to resurface in the future.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Cortes & Wilson, 2016).

Get free email updates

Join the free PsyBlog mailing list. No spam, ever.