Social Skills and Making Friends News – Edition #2
We’re excited to bring you edition #2 of our new series, where we share with you the latest resources we’ve found on social skills, making friends, and more. In this edition, we’ll share with you how your health is directly linked to your social skills, give you tips to turn co-workers into friends, and take a look at Tinder’s new offering for friendships. Don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter so you don’t miss any future editions!
Social Skills Connected To Survival (The Immune System): New Study Finds
(image courtesy of sciencedaily.com)
In this scientific article researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the immune system directly affects – and may even control – social behavior, such as the desire to interact with others. This new research implies a direct correlation between our health and proper social functioning.
This is an interesting new discovery on how your health is linked to your social activity. In the past, I heard so much news about how socially active people heal faster in cases of trauma, heart disease, or other impactful events. You can read more loneliness facts here. Now, this discovery is directly linking the immune system to social skills, instead of linking social skills to our health in general. That’s a profound shift.
This goes further in linking our survival to being able to interact with others. Evolutionarily, that makes sense; being part of a herd means you can survive animal or human attacks, you can hunt much better as a group, and without an immune system, you’re pretty much toast. So, when we hear that suppressing an immune system molecule reduces social skills, it’s an astounding correlation.
Now, let’s hear directly from the scientists who made this discovery.
Making Friends Out Of Co-workers
(image courtesy of bustle.com)
This piece from bustle.com talks about how intimidating it can be to make friends in the workplace, especially when you’re new. You can easily feel like an outsider! When you’re spending 40 hours a week at work, it can make your days go much faster if some of your co-workers are also your friends.
While this is a great guide on general behavior to encourage friendships at work, if you want a specific step-by-step guide on making friends at work, check out my previous article about it. What I enjoyed about this Bustle article is that it doesn’t ignore the fact that you should strive to stay professional (especially at first) as you try to develop a friendship.
From my experience, social boundaries are important and should be respected. Just because you think that Sally from the office is a great gal to hang out with doesn’t mean that all professional behavior should fly off the window. Respect the social norms, at least at first, and when you feel more comfortable hanging out outside the office, you can loosen up appropriately.
Tinder For Group Dates And Friendship – Really?
(image courtesy of tinder)
Tinder has ‘upped its game’ in the social apps environment, claiming that dating apps that only offer you the chance to make a romantic match are now a thing of the past. In this article on refinery29.com, you’ll see how Tinder’s new social component is designed to help you plan your night, get out into the real world, and meet new people.
Like many other “social trends” this can go both ways: it goes on to work for some people in some contexts. Or not at all. We’ll have to wait and see. It does sound funny though and can make things way more interesting if a group of friends wants to just have a great time. Let’s give it some time and then judge if this adds any value to the social apps space.
– Paul Sanders