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Proffitt and Harber’s recent collaboration, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The researchers grabbed 34 University of Virginia students who just happened to be strolling through campus, past a hill. Some of the students were walking alone. The others were in pairs with close friends.
The researchers asked the students to estimate the steepness of the hill. To do so, the students were handed a movable chart representing a cross section of the sky and ground. With a lever, students could manipulate the image so that the ground matched their assessment of the hill’s slope. Everyone had overestimated the actual steepness of the hill─but the students who were in the presence of friends thought thehill was much less steep compared with those who had been walking alone.
Another researcher in England then replicated this experiment. She had people come to the hill alone but─before estimating its gradient─the researchers asked them to think about someone they could really count on when times were tough. The closer they were to the person they were thinking of, the warmth of the relationship, how happy they were in the relationship─each one of those made the hill seem less steep.
Which makes this one of the loveliest journal findings I’ve come across in a long time. People naturally overestimate the difficulty of the challenge that lies ahead. But just the mere presence of friends can make the world seem like a more manageable place. The thought that someone out there cares about you is enough to make the hills we inevitably face seem measurably easier to climb.
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