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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Don't join something that's one-off because when you just go to something that happens once, you don't capitalize on something called the mere exposure effect, which is our tendency to like people the more familiar that they are. So it's normal and natural when we first meet someone for us to be uncomfortable, for it to be awkward, for us to be weary.
But according to the research, if we can stick with it for a few months, what will happen over time is that not only will they like us more, but we'll also like them more. And this happens completely unconsciously. We don't even have to talk to each other. But if we've been exposed to each other's faces over time, we'll come to like each other more and more.
So we all tend to have something called disregard criteria, which are snap judgments we might make as to whether someone will be our friend. And this might be based on someone's age, someone's gender, someone's race, these sort of criteria that we use, very shallow criteria to determine whether someone can be our friend.
And so we'll be more interested and open if someone doesn't violate our unconscious disregard criteria. Other than that, I would say commonality, if we hear that people have things in common, and why commonality leads to friendship is because, you know, people have asked me what's the secret to being more likable, and it's actually to like people.
There's a theory called the theory of inferred attraction, which basically indicates that people like people that they think like them. And when someone has something in common with us, we assume that they'll like us more, which makes us more comfortable continuing on with the friendship.
I would say friendship absolutely does not happen organically. In fact, people that see it as something that happens without effort are more lonely over time, according to the research. So if I had to talk to someone who has no friends and wants to make a new friend, I would say find a hobby or interest that you can engage in with a community over time, right?
So you can capitalize on that mere exposure effect. You have to attend to overcoming something called overt avoidance, which is our tendency to avoid interacting with people generally because they scare us, but also covert avoidance, which is our tendency to, when we show up to interact with other people, we actually close ourselves off mentally. We're on our phone.
We're talking to the one person we already know. We're not introducing ourselves to others. So you also have to overcome covert avoidance by saying to someone at that book club you join, hey, my name's Marissa. How did you like this book? How long have you been coming here?
after you've been going for a few times, pick the person that you feel like you connect with the most so far, and then ask them like, hey, I'd love for us to keep connecting. Would it be okay with you if we exchange contact information? And then reach out to them to meet up either before or after the next book club event.
And importantly, you'll still have that social infrastructure of the book club, which will continue to nurture the friendship over time, even if you're not consistently reaching out to them. But it's a good idea to also consistently reach out to them to build the friendship.
Yeah, there's a researcher, Jeffrey Hall, who has his study on how many hours does it take and he finds about 150 hours. But I guess part of me is a little bit skeptical because I know that making a friend also depends on how we interact and there are certain ways we can interact that make us more likely to become friends with one another.
So there is a study that followed basically new friends over 12 weeks to predict Who would stay friends over time? For whom would the friendship intensify? And one of the most important factors was whether people shared affection towards each other, you know, compliment each other, praise each other.
And that's, I think, is really, really important for solidifying connection according to a theory called risk regulation theory. Risk regulation theory argues that basically we decide how much to invest in a relationship based on our perception of how likely we are to get rejected. If we think we won't get rejected, we invest more.
And so when you share affection with someone, when you say, oh, I've just really enjoyed your company, or you really made me think when we've hung out together, or I just really appreciate this, like, thank you so much. When we do things like that, we tell people, hey, you're not going to get rejected. And remember how I said fear of rejection is one of the biggest barriers to friendship.
So the more that we can make people feel like they won't be rejected, the more they'll want to be friends with us. And so the implications of this is if you want to belong, make other people feel like they've they'll belong.
Well, one of the big factors I would say is vulnerability. Are you able to feel comfortable being vulnerable with each other, sharing your struggles, sharing what's really going on?
There's this study on, it's called like the 36 questions to fall in love that was covered in the New York Times, but it's based on the study that when this researcher gave people questions of increasing intimacy to do together, they found that at the end of just a short period of time for people answering these questions, they reported being Pretty close to each other, just within an hour.
And so that research really finds and other research that finds that actually when we're vulnerable, people like us more, where I think a lot of us have the misconception that people like us less. But in fact, when we're vulnerable, we show to people that we trust them and that we like them.
And so when we can really, really be vulnerable with each other, that's when we see the friendship really deepening.
It means to share something that you fear is risky or exposing.
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