Why you should really start doing more things alone 

On any given Friday night, bars, restaurants and movietheaters tend to fill up with people spending time with friends, lovers,and family. But when the weekend comes, those who find themselves on theirown are likelier to be found on the couch, at home, doingsomething in private.

There's nothing particularly strange here. But maybe we'remissing out when we automatically choose to stay in when we don't have socialplans.

"People decide to not do things all the time just becausethey're alone," said Rebecca Ratner, a professor of marketing at theRobert H. Smith School of Business, who has spent almost half adecade studying why people are so reluctant to have fun on theirown and how it may lead to, well, less fun overall. "But the thing is,they would probably be happier going out and doing something."

Ratner has a new study titled 'Inhibited from BowlingAlone,' a nod to Robert Putnam’s book aboutAmericans' waning participation in group activities, that's set to publishin the Journal of Consumer Research in August. In it, she andco-writer Rebecca Hamilton, a professor marketing at the McDonough School ofBusiness, describe their findings: that peopleconsistently underestimate how much they will enjoy seeing a show, goingto a museum, visiting a theater, or eating at a restaurant alone. That miscalculation,she argues, is only becoming more problematic, because peopleare working more, marrying later, and, ultimately, findingthemselves with smaller chunks of free time.

The conclusions stem from five separateexperiments. In four of them, the researchers surveyed people aboutcertain activities, probing whether they preferred to participate in themwith others or alone. In the fifth, Ratner and Hamilton put the preferences tothe test by gauging whether people actually enjoyed visiting an artgallery more when they were in the company of others, compared to when theywere alone.

What they found is that people expected to enjoy thegallery less when they were alone, but they actually tended to havejust as good a time whether they had company or not.

"When you compare an experience that is very similarwith or without someone else, like visiting a gallery or going to a movie, youfind little difference in enjoyment," said Hamilton. "Going to arestaurant might be a little different, because there's that element ofconversation, but that doesn't preclude the reality that going to a restaurantalone is still enjoyable."

Indeed, the question isn't whether we're going to have morefun doing something with friends rather than not. It's about those times whenwe don't have someone to see a new movie with, or eat at a newly openedrestaurant, and there's discomfort about going by ourselves, even though we'dprobably have a fine time.

"The reality is that you're foregoing a lot offun," said Ratner. "We all are."

Why? Ratner says it's mostly because we're overlyself-conscious.

"The reason is we think we won't have fun becausewe're worried about what other people will think," said Ratner."We end up staying at home instead of going out to do stuff becausewe're afraid others will think they're a loser."

But other people, as it turns out, actually aren'tthinking about us quite as judgmentally or intensely as we tend toanticipate. Not nearly, in fact. There's a long line of research that shows howconsistently and regularly we overestimate others' interest in ouraffairs. The phenomenon is so well known that there is even a namefor it in psychology: the spotlight effect. A 2000 study conducted byThomas Gilovich found that people regularly adjust their actions toacｃount for the perspective of others, even though their actions effectively gounnoticed. Many other researchers have since confirmed the pattern of egocentricthinking that skews how we act.

"If we get people to see that it’s okay to do something forpleasure on their own that’s the way to get rid of the stigma,"Hamilton said.

How exactly we might go about shedding the stigma is unclear.For one, businesses could be more accommodating of people doing soloactivities.

"Something as simple as adding a second set of tablewareinstead of removing that second set could set a subtle but important precedent,"Ratner said.

Another solution might involve tweaking how people perceive theactivities themselves. Ratner and Hamilton found that people are much morelikely to pursue an activity alone when it's a learning experience. For thatreason, bringing reading material along to a cafe or restaurant tends to shed anew light on the experience. But doing that, too, isoften a coy way of hiding your shame.

"It makes it look like they’re occupied and busy, notjust that they have no friends" said Hamilton.

But the best way to get rid of the stigma of doing things inpublic alone is probably for people to just start doing it more.

"We need the norms to shift a little. We needfor people to think it’s a gutsy cool thing to have fun on ourown," said Ratner. "Someone needs to start the new trend."

Article Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/02/why-you-should-really-start-doing-more-things-alone/?tid=pm_pop_b

Image Source: http://www.fancygirldesignstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/paris-fancygirlart.jpg

VOCABULARY WORDS:

1. Reluctant (adj.) ~unwilling  

2. Miscalculate (v.) ~ toｃount or estimate incorrectly  

3. Forego (v.) ~ to go before 

4. Egocentric (adj.) ~ regardingeverything only in relation to oneself  

5. Skew (v.) ~ to give a biasto 

6. Stigma (n.) ~ an associationof public disapproval with something  

7. Precedent (n.) ~ an act orinstance that may be used as an example  

8. Coy (adj.) ~ tending toavoid people and social situations 

QUESTIONS FORDISCUSSION:

1. Do you like doing things by yourself ordo you often prefer being with other people? Why? 

2. Have you ever tried eating in arestaurant alone? How was the experience? 

3. Why is it that people are usually very consciousabout what other people think of them?