In the corona crisis threatens a loss of community. In particular, because some fundamental misjudges prevail over the nature of man
A short conversation with a stranger, a short burial of the bus driver, a chat with a seller, a nice thank you, honestly meant good wishes to an unknown, a cursive discussion in a cafe. Short social interactions are more or less frequently in life. But what significance has such encounters, which are mostly very short nature for human life? For well-being?
A little blessing
In an experiment, the subjects were divided into bus trips, either entertaining with a neighbor on the way to avoid any contact or behave as they are customary. The result: people who were forced by the experiment to address unknown neighbors on the bus ride, fell very better.
The experiment was repeated two years ago in slightly modified form. With the same result. In another experiment in which volunteers should encounter a barista unknown barista in a cafe like a good friend (eye contact, laughs, a short conversation) once again confirmed: This type of short interactions increased well-being.
A current experiment with the most sustainable title "Minimal Social Interactions With Strangers Predict Greater Subjective Well-Being" could determine the same positive effect even with only very cursive encounters, which consist only of buried and thanks. The two researchers Paul van Lange and Simon Columbus from the Universities Amsterdam and Copenhagen emphasize in their research looks that a short conversation with unknowns the well-being increased:
This is reflected in interactions with bus drivers, other commuters in bus or train, with the person behind the counter, which sells the coffee or with other subjects in an experiment.
Paul van Lange and Simon Columbus
The statement is followed by the important realization that not only the close social environment of friends, but also the expanded social environment as well-known has a rough impact on the well-being of humans.
The economist Noreena Hertz explains the potential of this too frequently overlooking human ability:
By meeting other kindly or even for a brief moment itself, we learn friendliness, we remember what we mean together with each other, to our common humanity – and therefore less alone.
Noreena Hertz
Or something free to Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "A laughing is often the essentials. You are paid with a laughing. You will be rewarded with a laughing. One is revived by a laughter."
Fundamental misguiding
So clearly the result of the various experiments is that the small friendliness in everyday life increases its own well-being, so clearly exchanged the subjects of almost all experiments in their association.
Then asked how they were fed to appeal if they had to address an unknown person, they amed that they were amed to feel better, if they were allowed to remain in their familiar social isolation and do not experience any encounter with an unknown person became.
Only in an experiment did the subjects ame that the encounter with an unknown enhance their own well-being. Nevertheless, there was a fundamental misguision, because people were convinced that the encounter will be less pleasing than they then finally experienced them because they amed that the unknown person became no interest in a conversation.
This does not end the series of widespread misalysis. So people often hate their own charisma. The result of a study:
We found that people systematically sued people after a conversation, how much their conversation partners they liked and enjoyed their society, an illusion we as "Sympathy" (Liking Gap). (…) Our studies suggest that people are likely to be liked than they know.
Erica J. Boothby et al.
Especially this miscaluation is all the more amazing, as if people often tend to be their own abilities, such as car driving, to survive. Your social skills, on the other hand, understood them as well as massive.
People avoid fellow human beings
The consequence of these directly linking to the sympathetic manner on human nature and thus that calls for its own wellbeing is saddenly the avoidance of exactly what uses good tut and the social nature of man: the social contact. With each other. The bond also in the small moments of everyday life.
Particularly unfortunate: the pleasure of human contacts and the increase in well-being by a short friendly encounter is contagious. Because not only the subjects fell after the encounters with the unknown wealthy, but also the people who were addressed unexpectedly.
The fellow human is not the threat
So comprehensibly at first glance of the fingering thing since the beginning of the corona crisis is in the direction of the fellow man who could be a potential infectious brick, and so logically the demand for social distancing appears, so questionable are at the same time his side effects.
A significant reduction in social interactions and close to fellow human beings may perhaps be an easy to worry for many, because it corresponds exactly to the tendency showing itself in the numerous experiments: prefer to hold the distance to fellow human beings, prefer no conversation Better not a unknown person friendly or thank you rather than "the danger" expose an encounter. But right here lies the crux.
Most people do not realize that an encounter is usually an interaction that they (and the addressed) good-to-care because they also sign the desire of people to be addressed, as well as their own social skills as well as their effect on the fellow human beings.
That’s why it is so easy to abandon an important part of what is the nature of man and does humans. Instead of briefly reflecting the power of social interactions, encounters, shortness of professionalism, the proven mammals is a balm for the soul.
Noreena Hertz already refers to the epoch immediately before the corona crisis as "Lonely century since immense moments". Loneliness is a societal phenomena and it is considered: loneliness reduces empathy, lowers trust and increases hostile behavior.
With regard to the present situation of social spanning, Hertz gives in your brilliant book "The age of loneliness" To remember:
The danger of the contactless age is that we know each other less and less, to feel less interconnected and we are always equal to us the wishes and needs of our fellow human beings.
Noreena Hertz
Once again, how much man is a social beings and what danger is to forget this insight. It threatens the loss of community. The loss of each other.
Hertz therefore urges urgent:
We are not inevitably more loners, the more man is banished from our everyday transactions? If our active city life is no longer interrupted by Small Talk at the cash register or plank with the bartender when we no longer see the friendly face of the person behind the counter in the take-away restaurant, which prepares our sandwich, or the encouraging laughing of ours Yoga teacher, if our first handstand succeeds?
If we lose the prediction of all these micro-interactions, of which we know now that they convey a feeling of bonds with our environment, then it is not inevitable that we are always instructed and cut off?
Noreena Hertz
Drug without side effects
"Our health will appear to be influenced by mutual attachment not only by community and a feeling of mutual bonds, but also by friendliness – among friends and family, colleagues, employers and neighbors, but also under strangers. We have to consider that in the reconstruction of our world to Corona – and also that kindness in neoliberal capitalism became a preservation, for whose devaluation we all contributed", Gives Hertz to consider.
Especially in the opposite crisis, which people can be socially distanced socially from each other and the feeling for the community and the community is very quickly lost, it is exceptionally important to reflect on the small everyday moments of friendliness and professionalism. To your own well. For the benefit of fellow human beings and not least for the well-being of the community.
Right now, the meaning of the day-to-day and everyday encounters must be discovered and lived again in their fellow sympathy dimension.
