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Online connections may not meet all of our social needs
“Friendships can grow very quickly if you do not invest in them – it probably only takes three months,” says evolutionary psychologist Prof Robin Dunbar.
That the social tension of lockdown, though hopefully short-term, may have some long-term effects on some friendships, he says.
In a paper in the Royal Society magazine, Proceedings A, Prof Dunbar outlined the ways in which our social connections will be changed by lockdown.
The Oxford University academic’s insight into these effects comes from a social world far removed from Zoom quizzes and Whatsapp groups. The roots of our friendships, he says, lie in the social lives of non-human primates.
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For some primates, life depends on being part of a stable group
For many of these primates, strong social ties – part of a “stable group” – mean protection against predators and rivals.
That goes in a way of revealing why many of us cherish our closest friends as if our lives depended on it. In our evolutionary history, they did.
And those bonds require a lot of maintenance.
One-in, one-out
In both monkeys and humans, research shows that the quality of a relationship – measured by how likely a fellow monkey, monkey or human is to act and defend you – depends directly on the time invested in it. .
“We have to see people surprisingly often to maintain a friendship,” explains Ox Dunbar, of Oxford University. And because nurturing friendships requires all that time and cognitive capacity, we can only maintain a limited number of social connections.
“In locksmithing, a lot of people are forming new friendships with people on their streets and in their community for the first time,” says Prof Dunbar.
“So when we get out of the closet, some of our more marginal friendships may be replaced by some of these new ones.”
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One influence of this is what is called “relationship tunneling” – an effect picked up by a large survey conducted by social scientists in France during the very restrictive lockdown there.
Simply put, while some friendships were prioritized and even strengthened through care and increased communication, other more marginal connections were simply “fizzled out”.
One major problem resulting from this “fizzling” is any lasting impact on friendships of older people.
“As we get older, we generally find it more difficult to make new friends,” says Prof Dunbar.
“And the biggest single factor that affects health, well-being, happiness – even the ability to survive surgery or illness – is the number of high-quality friendships you have.”
Need a hug
As long as it is temporary, our closer, more valued friendships must survive intact through lockdown – at least in part strengthened, against the time we can still spend online with our friends.
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Chimpanzees can spend hours caring for another individual
Dr Jenny Groarke of Queen’s University, Belfast, studied loneliness during the pandemic.
“People use digital communication methods to meet their social needs, but they are less satisfied with the quality of this form relative to face-to-face contact,” she says.
“[This] lower satisfaction with the quality of digital social contact, we found, was associated with higher loneliness. “
This is in line with the findings of Prof Dunbar’s research into social behavior. There is no substitute, he says, for close, face-to-face meetings.
Part of that is the human need for touch.
“People [in our surveys] also talked about missing physical touch, and finding it ‘bizarre’ and ‘not normal’ to go on for so long without touching people, “says Dr Groarke.
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We are not the only primates to cuddle
And looking for our closest primate relatives – the chimpanzees – touch is not only “normal”, it is socially important.
Chimpanzees often spend hours each day caring for one another. This close, strict one-on-one, stroking and parasite picking is not just about hygiene. Research shows that it strengthens social bonds and activates the brain to release innate, pain-relieving and pleasure-enhancing chemicals called endorphins.
However, as many of our modern human interactions move online, our own brains are still wired to respond to a similarly soft touch (of course, if fully invited and appropriate).
We, like our primate cousin, have a specialized system of nerve fibers that pick up the sensation of touch from our skin and transfer it to those endorphin-releasing bundles of brain cells.
Scientists studying this touch-triggered system of pleasure have even conducted experiments showing that the more “human-like” it feels to stroke our forearm, the more “comfortable” it feels.
As researchers reported in a recently published study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: “Perceiving gentle touch as human seems to promote promotion possible because it serves to strengthen interpersonal contact as a means of creating and maintaining social bonds.”
This gives new physiological significance to the feeling of a hug needed by a friend.
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Eating and drinking together activates the “pleasure centers” of the brain
“We make physical contact all the time,” says Prof Dunbar. “There are strict natural rules about who we can touch, but with close friends and family we pat on the back, we touch a shoulder …
“Because it is below the horizon of consciousness, we do not appreciate how important it is to us.”
Fortunately, however, there are other social activities for people that activate the pleasure centers of the brain – many of which can be done at a social distance or online. Laughing, singing, dancing and eating and drinking alcohol together are all found endorphin free and play a role in maintaining our very important social bonds.
For most of us, says Prof Dunbar reassuringly, this time of social distance will be a sad but temporary frustration. But we will need to set the time to repair broken relationships.
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