Psychology tips for maintaining social relationships during Psychology tips for maintaining social relationships during lockdown
Credit: Sisoje/Getty
Robin Dunbar has spent decades studying relationships, social bonding and the importance of touch and grooming in forging and sustaining our ties to others. As much of the world remains in lockdown, unable to meet loved ones and friends in person, New Scientist caught up with him to ask what implications this might have.
New Scientist: How important are touch and contact in person in our relationships?
Robin Dunbar: For all mammals, including us, grooming triggers the endorphin system [which relieves stress and pain]. Brain-imaging studies looking at people being stroked show that their endorphin receptors go absolutely crazy. With our closer friends and family, you actually do a lot of casual stroking and touching and hugging that we don’t think about, it’s all going on below the event horizon of consciousness.
Not only does this make you feel happy, because it releases endorphins, which raise your pain thresholds and make you feel relaxed and much more trusting, but it also seems to kick on the immune system, making you more resistant to diseases.
Are you worried about people going without this kind of touch, due to the pandemic or other issues?
For most people, in the short term, I would say no. Everything hinges on how long this lasts. Clearly, the expectation is that it’s only going to be a few months and then we’re going to be back to normal. You can also trigger this same endorphin system by going for a jog, for instance.
Are there social ways to trigger this response?
To increase the size of our social groups, we’ve discovered ways of triggering the endorphin system that don’t involve touch. All of the singing from balconies and in streets. Singing is one of the social mechanisms we use. There’s laughter, singing, dancing, eating socially, drinking socially, all of those kinds of things are what we use to enlarge our social circle.
Read more: Why your brain needs touch to make you human
Physical grooming is very intimate. This is what ultimately limits the size of primates’ social groups. They don’t have enough time in the day to groom more than a set number of individuals, and the quality of the relationship depends on the time invested in it. So going out to clap for healthcare workers and the like probably makes you feel better.
So doing things with others amplifies feel-good effects?
Yes. We first discovered this with rowing crews, in a study we did about 10 years ago. We showed that just by rowing on the machines in the gym there’s an uplift in pain threshold signalling and endorphin release. But then if you link the rowing machines into a virtual boat, so the rowers are rowing together and in synchrony, it ramps up the endorphin output by about 100 per cent for no extra effort.
We’ve shown this with dance too, and even tears. We did a study in which we had a group of people watch a very emotionally draining film. People who like weepy films get this rush of endorphins, and then also feel very bonded to the group of strangers who they watched it with. The sociality ramps up the effect. That’s why I think a lot of these social mechanisms we use for bonding on the larger scale are highly synchronised: laughter, singing, dancing, religious rituals.
Can we get the benefits of shared activities – such as laughing or singing together – over video chat?
We haven’t looked at that directly, but we have looked at people’s sense of satisfaction or happiness as a result of communicating with friends via different media. Skype and face-to-face video are in a different league to everything else. Once you can see the person, it makes a big difference – the fact that you can see the smile breaking on their face before you’ve finished the joke.
Read more: World in lockdown as coronavirus cases soar
Do you think there will be positive things that come out of this lockdown, in terms of how we connect with each other?
We’ve already seen people getting onto Skype or Zoom with their friends or extended family and saying, “This is crazy, why have we never done this before?” That may well continue. It completely neutralises the problem of distance. In social networks, there’s a very strong effect called the 30-minute rule that dictates how long you’re willing to travel to go to see somebody. Video and other digital media reduces its impact.
Many people are now contacting friends and family at rates that far exceed what they’ve done normally. And I think when lockdown is removed, people will be making a big effort to go and visit friends and family.
Sign up to our free Health Check newsletter for a round-up of all the health and fitness news you need to know, every Saturday
- Do face masks work against the coronavirus and should you wear one?
- We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time
- Can you catch the coronavirus twice? We don’t know yet
- Astronomers have spotted the most powerful supernova ever
- Will a home antibody test for covid-19 really be a game changer?
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2240487-psychology-tips-for-maintaining-social-relationships-during-lockdown/#ixzz6JbyK5lKe
Credit: Sisoje/Getty
Robin Dunbar has spent decades studying relationships, social bonding and the importance of touch and grooming in forging and sustaining our ties to others. As much of the world remains in lockdown, unable to meet loved ones and friends in person, New Scientist caught up with him to ask what implications this might have.
New Scientist: How important are touch and contact in person in our relationships?
Robin Dunbar: For all mammals, including us, grooming triggers the endorphin system [which relieves stress and pain]. Brain-imaging studies looking at people being stroked show that their endorphin receptors go absolutely crazy. With our closer friends and family, you actually do a lot of casual stroking and touching and hugging that we don’t think about, it’s all going on below the event horizon of consciousness.
Not only does this make you feel happy, because it releases endorphins, which raise your pain thresholds and make you feel relaxed and much more trusting, but it also seems to kick on the immune system, making you more resistant to diseases.
Are you worried about people going without this kind of touch, due to the pandemic or other issues?
For most people, in the short term, I would say no. Everything hinges on how long this lasts. Clearly, the expectation is that it’s only going to be a few months and then we’re going to be back to normal. You can also trigger this same endorphin system by going for a jog, for instance.
Are there social ways to trigger this response?
To increase the size of our social groups, we’ve discovered ways of triggering the endorphin system that don’t involve touch. All of the singing from balconies and in streets. Singing is one of the social mechanisms we use. There’s laughter, singing, dancing, eating socially, drinking socially, all of those kinds of things are what we use to enlarge our social circle.
Read more: Why your brain needs touch to make you human
Physical grooming is very intimate. This is what ultimately limits the size of primates’ social groups. They don’t have enough time in the day to groom more than a set number of individuals, and the quality of the relationship depends on the time invested in it. So going out to clap for healthcare workers and the like probably makes you feel better.
So doing things with others amplifies feel-good effects?
Yes. We first discovered this with rowing crews, in a study we did about 10 years ago. We showed that just by rowing on the machines in the gym there’s an uplift in pain threshold signalling and endorphin release. But then if you link the rowing machines into a virtual boat, so the rowers are rowing together and in synchrony, it ramps up the endorphin output by about 100 per cent for no extra effort.
We’ve shown this with dance too, and even tears. We did a study in which we had a group of people watch a very emotionally draining film. People who like weepy films get this rush of endorphins, and then also feel very bonded to the group of strangers who they watched it with. The sociality ramps up the effect. That’s why I think a lot of these social mechanisms we use for bonding on the larger scale are highly synchronised: laughter, singing, dancing, religious rituals.
Can we get the benefits of shared activities – such as laughing or singing together – over video chat?
We haven’t looked at that directly, but we have looked at people’s sense of satisfaction or happiness as a result of communicating with friends via different media. Skype and face-to-face video are in a different league to everything else. Once you can see the person, it makes a big difference – the fact that you can see the smile breaking on their face before you’ve finished the joke.
Read more: World in lockdown as coronavirus cases soar
Do you think there will be positive things that come out of this lockdown, in terms of how we connect with each other?
We’ve already seen people getting onto Skype or Zoom with their friends or extended family and saying, “This is crazy, why have we never done this before?” That may well continue. It completely neutralises the problem of distance. In social networks, there’s a very strong effect called the 30-minute rule that dictates how long you’re willing to travel to go to see somebody. Video and other digital media reduces its impact.
Many people are now contacting friends and family at rates that far exceed what they’ve done normally. And I think when lockdown is removed, people will be making a big effort to go and visit friends and family.
Sign up to our free Health Check newsletter for a round-up of all the health and fitness news you need to know, every Saturday
- Do face masks work against the coronavirus and should you wear one?
- We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time
- Can you catch the coronavirus twice? We don’t know yet
- Astronomers have spotted the most powerful supernova ever
- Will a home antibody test for covid-19 really be a game changer?
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2240487-psychology-tips-for-maintaining-social-relationships-during-lockdown/#ixzz6JbyK5lKe
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