A catch-up call may feel less awkward than you expect

You can want to hear from an old friend and still hesitate over the call button. An email offers time to choose the words. A conversation asks you to deal with the pauses as they happen. The catch is that imagining those pauses may be a poor guide to how the exchange will actually feel.

Research by Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley, first published online in 2020, compared people's expectations of voice and text communication with their experiences. In the experiments, interactions involving a voice produced stronger feelings of connection without a corresponding increase in reported awkwardness. The useful finding is not that everyone should stop typing. It is that anticipated discomfort can steer a choice before the conversation has had a chance.

These are older experiments, not evidence of a new calling trend. Their practical relevance is a familiar decision: when the purpose is to catch up with someone you like, are you choosing the medium that suits you both, or simply avoiding the one you expect to feel awkward?

The researchers recruited 200 University of Chicago students and asked them to identify someone they had once been close to but had not interacted with for at least a couple of years. Participants predicted what reconnecting by phone and email would feel like, stated their preference, and were then randomly assigned one of the two methods.

Two-thirds preferred email. Yet they also expected a phone call to create a stronger bond. Their hesitation was not a belief that writing would necessarily bring them closer. They expected talking to be more awkward.

The follow-up complicates that forecast. Among the 103 participants who successfully completed the experiment, those assigned to phone calls reported a stronger bond than those assigned to email. Reported awkwardness did not differ significantly between the groups.

That last phrase matters. It does not mean the calls contained no awkward moments. Nor does it establish that the two methods are identical for every person. It means the experiment did not detect the extra awkwardness people had anticipated from calling. A separate rating of whether participants felt they had really reconnected was less conclusive in the initial comparison, so the results should not be inflated into an across-the-board victory for the telephone.

There is another important limit: almost half the original group did not complete the experiment. Some did not answer the follow-up; others could not reach their chosen person. The experience findings concern the participants who followed through, not a guarantee about everyone who considers making contact.

Phone and email differ in more than sound. One happens live; the other can unfold gradually. To examine that problem, Kumar and Epley also studied strangers having live conversations through text chat, audio or video, using a structured set of personal questions.

Participants felt more connected in the conditions that included a voice than in text chat, again without significantly greater reported awkwardness. Adding video did not produce a significant extra connection benefit over audio in that experiment.

That is a narrower and more useful point than declaring one app superior. The study compared communication conditions, not competing brands. It also does not establish that a recorded voice note works like a live conversation, or that a camera never matters. The exchanges were structured, and the participants were strangers rather than friends managing years of shared history.

For a catch-up, the finding gives audio a fair hearing. You need not assume that a worthwhile conversation requires a video appointment, a tidy room and everyone ready to be seen. Whether audio is comfortable and accessible for both people remains a separate question.

A later paper by Lara Aknin and Gillian Sandstrom, published in Communications Psychology in 2024, examined a different problem: whether people would reach out to an old friend at all. Across seven studies, wanting to reconnect did not reliably turn into sending a message.

In one experiment, participants first spent three minutes messaging current friends or acquaintances, or browsing social media. Both groups were then encouraged to contact an old friend. In the final sample of 194 people, 53% of the practice group reported sending that message, compared with 31% of the browsing group.

This was a messaging intervention, not a test of telephone calls. It measured initiating contact, not whether a lasting friendship was restored. The distinction stops the two papers being bundled into a supposed formula for reviving any relationship.

The later research also focused on people participants wanted to reconnect with. Its authors explicitly caution that friendships which faded through neglect are different from relationships that ended painfully. These findings are not a reason to override someone's boundaries or reopen contact they have declined.

One practical option is to separate the invitation from the conversation. A short message can ask whether someone would like to catch up by phone and suggest a time, while leaving them free to prefer writing. That is an editorial suggestion drawn from the distinction between starting contact and choosing its format, not a sequence these studies tested.

It also avoids turning research about connection into a new etiquette burden. An unexpected call may arrive during work, caring responsibilities or a moment without privacy. Hearing, speech, language and access needs can change which format is usable. A preference for text is not evidence that someone cares less.

The studies used particular samples, including university students, and the 2024 authors note that their Western-country findings may not generalise elsewhere. Neither paper establishes a universal calling schedule or a treatment for loneliness. The immediate outcomes are much more modest: how an interaction felt, and whether someone initiated one.

If awkwardness is the only reason you keep postponing a welcome catch-up, the evidence offers a reason to question that forecast. Ask what works for the other person, then leave room for an ordinary conversation. A text can open the door without having to do all the work of the visit.