Most people said they would rather send the email. The ones who made the call felt closer.
Researchers Had 200 People Reconnect With an Old Friend, by Phone or by Email. The Phone Felt Closer, and It Was Not Any More Awkward.
A study by Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General compared reaching out by voice with reaching out by text.
You have a name in mind right now. Someone you have been meaning to reach. And somewhere in your head a small voice says, **"I will just send a message."**
Psychologists Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley wanted to know whether that instinct is right. In a field experiment, **200 people were asked to reconnect with an old friend, some by phone and some by email.** Then they measured how it felt.
The result is a quiet argument for the phone call. It is also an honest study with limits, and we will say what they are.
1. Most people chose the easy option
Before anyone reached out, the researchers asked what participants expected. **Most said they would rather send an email.** The reason was the fear of an awkward conversation.
That is a very human reason. A call feels like more of a risk than a message, so the message wins, and the call waits for a better day.
We dodge the call because we expect it to be awkward.
2. Then they actually did it
Participants were randomly assigned to reach their old friend by phone or by email. Afterward, **the people who called reported stronger feelings of connection.** And the awkwardness people feared? **The calls were no more awkward than the emails.**
A second experiment paired strangers to answer personal questions over text chat, video chat, or voice only. **Voice created a stronger bond than typing, again without more awkwardness.** The researchers also noted that the phone calls took about as long as the email exchanges.
The call felt closer, and the awkward part mostly never showed up.
3. What this does and does not tell us
The friends in the main experiment were old friends, not parents or grandparents, and the second experiment used strangers. **The study does not test families, and it does not test telling a life story.**
What it does show is that our guess about how a call will feel is off, and in a direction that keeps us from the thing that connects us. **If a voice builds more closeness than words on a screen, then the voice of someone you love is worth reaching for, and worth keeping.**
We guess wrong about calls. The guess costs us closeness.
People feel significantly more connected through voice-based media, but they have these fears about awkwardness that are pushing them towards text-based media.Amit Kumar, University of Texas at Austin
What you get with LifeScribe
- 200 people were asked to reconnect with an old friend, by phone or by email.
- The people who called felt more connected, and the calls were no more awkward.
- A second experiment found voice built a stronger bond between strangers than typing did.
- Built on documented research: Kumar and Epley, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2021, volume 150, issue 3, pages 595 to 607.
Start free, with nothing to lose
It is just a phone call, free. Ari calls, asks about your life, and listens, so your stories are kept in your own voice for the people you love.
The voices you could call today will not always be there to answer. A few minutes on the phone, while it is still easy, is worth more than a message you meant to make into a call.
Make the call. Keep the voice.
Ari calls and listens, so the stories behind a life are kept in your own voice for the people you love.
Questions grandparents ask us
What did the study actually find?
People who reconnected with an old friend by phone reported stronger feelings of connection than people who used email, and the calls were not more awkward. A second experiment found voice-based chat created a stronger bond between strangers than text chat.
How was it done?
In the main experiment, 200 participants were asked to reconnect with an old friend, and were randomly assigned to do it by phone or by email. In a second experiment, strangers answered personal questions over text, video, or voice only.
Did people expect this?
No. Most participants said they would rather use email, expecting a phone call to be more awkward. The experience did not match that expectation.
Does this apply to families or to LifeScribe?
The study looked at old friends and strangers, not families, and not any app. Connecting it to calling the people you love, and to keeping their voices, is our reading, not a finding of the study.
Who ran the study?
Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2021, volume 150, issue 3, pages 595 to 607.
https://getlifescribeapp.com/blog/the-call-felt-closer-than-the-email