100 Second Challenge: Text Three People Today to Enhance Their Vitality

VitalityExplorers.com

The data supporting social connection as a measure of overall vitality is staggering. Lack of social connection can be as bad for you as smoking or obesity.

COVID destroyed many of our social connections even with our close family members and friends. We are slowly restoring those relationships now. I think we can do better by simply sending a few texts.

100 Second Challenge: Text Three People Today and Say Hello

It is a 100 second challenge because I think we can text three people in that amount of time or less. It may be the most valuable 100 seconds of your day.

Don’t ask for a favor. Don’t expect anything in return. Just connect with them and tell them you were thinking about them today. Tell them you miss them. Remind them of a fun time you may have had in the past together. Just reach out.

This will be good for your vitality and very good for the person on the other end of your text.

As always on Vitality Explorer News, we support our suggestions with data. Let’s review a recently published paper on the topic of reaching out to other people.

This paper is entitled: “The Surprise of Reaching out: Appreciated More Than We Think.

The researchers found we underestimate the value of simply reaching out to another person and letting them know we are thinking about them. They also found that if that message was in a “surprising context” it was appreciated more. (See graph below)

The paper also studied the responder’s level of appreciation based on whether the connection was weak or strong. They found the weak tie responders appreciated the “reach out” more than the initiators. Both parties, however, derived value from connecting with another person. (See graph below)

Vitality Explorer News Analysis and Recommendations

This paper provides evidence that simply reaching out to another human has significant value. It has more value if the person is not expecting it.

I think we could massively enhance each other’s vitality by simply sending supportive texts.

The cost to us virtually zero in terms of time and money.

So, execute today on the 100 second challenge and text three people with a simple message of support.

Please post your comments below about this challenge and please share this post with your network.

Reference

The Surprise of Reaching Out: Appreciated More Than We Think

Liu et al

People are fundamentally social beings and enjoy connecting with others. Sometimes, people reach out to others—whether simply to check-in on how others are doing with brief messages or to show that they are thinking of others by sending small gifts to them. Yet, despite the importance and enjoyment of social connection, do people accurately understand how much other people value being reached out to by someone in their social circle? Across a series of preregistered experiments, we document a robust underestimation of how much other people appreciate being reached out to. We find evidence compatible with an account wherein one reason this underestimation of appreciation occurs is because responders (vs. initiators) are more focused on their feelings of surprise at being reached out to. A focus on feelings of surprise in turn predicts greater appreciation. We further identify process-consistent moderators of the underestimation of reach-out appreciation, finding that it is magnified when the reach-out context is more surprising: when it occurs within a surprising (vs. unsurprising) context for the recipient and when it occurs between more socially distant (vs. socially close) others. Altogether, this research thus identifies when and why we underestimate how much other people appreciate us reaching out to them, implicating a heightened focus on feelings of surprise as one underlying explanation.