Dr. Marisa Franco
speaker
59 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Dr. Marisa Franco’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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It's absolutely normal to go through these breakups with friends and actually every seven years we lose about half our friends. Also, about half of our friends don't consider us their friends. What we do know is that the longer a friendship has lasted, the more likely it is to continue to last.
Thank you so much for having me.
So many reasons. I mean, connection is related to our mental health and wellbeing. Research finds that loneliness is as toxic as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And that our level of connection actually predicts how long we live even more so than our diet and our exercise, for example.
So I think just like we can consider like food, oxygen, water as central to our wellbeing and our homeostasis, so is human connection.
That's absolutely true. And we've also been finding that people are spending more time with their romantic partners and alone over the past few decades and less time with their friends and everybody else.
So we tend to think of loneliness as just a feeling, but it's actually a way of perceiving the world. So because historically, when we were lonely, we were separated from our tribes. We were in danger. That led to loneliness kind of leading to a bunch of ways of viewing the world and relating to others. So when we're lonely, according to the research, we actually think that people like us less.
We actually like other people less. We actually report having less faith in humanity. All of this is so that we can protect ourselves at times of loneliness. But obviously, this can also be very self-sabotaging, such that loneliness can become a self-perpetuating cycle because of how it affects how we perceive and relate to others.
Exactly, Mike. And actually, the most successful interventions against loneliness are not the ones that have focused on connecting people with others, but actually on changing people's maladaptive thought patterns that are triggered when they're lonely.
Which means that if you think people don't like you, or if you're very cynical about not liking other people, reframing those beliefs, trying to think differently so that you can be more open to connecting with people.
Yeah, so I don't think it's as much about being kids as much as it is about the settings that we're in when we're kids, which provide for factors that sociologists really consider central for making connections, such as continuous unplanned interaction, so I'm seeing you consistently without planning it, and shared vulnerability.
And when we have these factors in place, friendship tends to happen more or less organically. But as adults, we tend to no longer have these environments because at work, sure, we're seeing each other every day. Well, maybe less so now with everybody working from home, but we're not necessarily having that vulnerability in the workplace where people may only know one side of us.
And so because of that, I think, unfortunately, a lot of us might rely on this script from childhood where we just need to wait for friendships to come into our lives organically, not realizing that as adults, it no longer works that way.
I can see that too, that adults may be a little bit more afraid of initiating with other people. And that's honestly one of the biggest barriers that I see when it comes to making friends. We're all so, so afraid of rejection. But the truth is, Mike, that we're actually a lot less likely to be rejected than we think.
There's research on a phenomenon called the liking gap, where when strangers interact and they predict how much the other person likes them, they tend to underestimate how much the other person likes them. which is why one of my biggest tips for making friends as an adult is to assume people like you. So you'll actually initiate with people.
And now the research also finds that when researchers sort of manipulated people to think that they would be liked, even though that wasn't true, people actually became more likable because they were more open, more agreeable, more friendly. It's called the acceptance prophecy. Whereas people that think they'll be rejected suffer from something called rejection sensitivity.
And what happens is when these people are exposed to ambiguous circumstances, like someone's quieter, they tend to escalate by shutting down, being withdrawn, and they sort of will and manifest the same rejection that they fear.
Yeah. And you know what? I will say, surprisingly from my read of the research, who's most likely to reject you is the person that fears rejection the most because they're engaging in self-protective behaviors to protect themselves against rejection, which tend to manifest as rejection of other people.
Exactly. Yeah, there was a really interesting study of networking events that found that 95% of people wanted to meet new people, and yet most people interacted with people they already know.
But I think it's really helpful to know this information, because now if I go into a social event, I know everybody's just waiting for me to introduce myself, and they're more than likely going to be very open to it if I do.
Yeah, so one thing that I suggest to people is to build social infrastructure, which to me means recreating environments that give you continuous unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability. So that means joining an improv club, joining a language group.
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