'You talking to me?" asked Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, in a question that has echoed down the decades since the 1976 movie. Bickle was an alienated loner who struggled to connect with others. "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world," noted Funny Girl's Fanny Brice a few years earlier.
But not all people are lucky. With one-person households comprising a quarter of the total, and various technological and epidemiological factors at work to keep us apart, people need people more than ever. Overseas, the trend is the same, with an American Enterprise Institute survey in 2021 reporting that 12% of Americans say they have no close friends (compared with 3% in 1990).
If Bickle and Brice had had the findings of an experiment by Harvard Business School doctoral student Hanne Collins and a team of researchers to hand, their thinking on the subject might have been a lot more results-oriented. The title of the researchers' paper is a rough paraphrase of Brice's words: "Relational Diversity in Social Portfolios Predicts Wellbeing".
So what exactly is "relational diversity"? It's academic speak for interacting with a wider variety of people in your life.
"There's two elements of relational portfolio diversity," Collins says. "One is the richness. That's the number of categories of relationships that you're talking to - family, friends, acquaintances, strangers, etc. And the other part is the evenness. Say you had 10 conversations yesterday. A very low relationally diverse situation would be if eight of those were with your romantic partner and two were with a friend."
A more even scenario would be if you had conversations with colleagues, friends, your romantic partner, strangers and parents. Talking with eight people in your open-plan office doesn't count.
Denne historien er fra April 15-21 2023-utgaven av New Zealand Listener.
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Denne historien er fra April 15-21 2023-utgaven av New Zealand Listener.
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First-world problem
Harrowing tales of migrants attempting to enter the US highlight the political failure to fully tackle the problem.
Applying intelligence to AI
I call it the 'Terminator Effect', based on the premise that thinking machines took over the world.
Nazism rears its head
Smirky Höcke, with his penchant for waving with a suspiciously straight elbow and an open palm, won't get to be boss of either state.
Staying ahead of the game
Will the brave new world of bipartisanship that seems to be on offer with an Infrastructure Commission come to fruition?
Grasping the nettle
Broccoli is horrible. It smells, when being cooked, like cat pee.
Hangry? Eat breakfast
People who don't break their fast first thing in the morning report the least life satisfaction.
Chemical reaction
Nitrates in processed meats are well known to cause harm, but consumed from plant sources, their effect is quite different.
Me and my guitar
Australian guitarist Karin Schaupp sticks to the familiar for her Dunedin concerts.
Time is on my side
Age does not weary some of our much-loved musicians but what keeps them on the road?
The kids are not alright
Nuanced account details how China's blessed generation has been replaced by one consumed by fear and hopelessness.