Why Some Things Are More Fun to Do Alone

When people are out in public doing fun things, they usually want to be doing them with other people. In a series of studies, which I discussed previously here at “Living Single,” Rebecca K. Ratner and Rebecca W. Hamilton showed that people expect to enjoy their leisure activities more when they are going to be with a friend than if they will be alone. They worry that other people will judge them if they are doing fun things on their own. But when the researchers looked at how much people enjoyed an art gallery when they were there by themselves, compared to when they were there with a friend, they found no differences. The art gallery visitors worried about not enjoying it so much on their own, but their fears were unfounded.

Now those two researchers have collaborated with two others, Yuechen Wu and Nicole You Jeung Kim, to demonstrate something even bolder: Sometimes doing fun things alone is even more fun than doing them with someone else. Their report, “Navigating shared consumption experiences,” was published earlier this year (2021) in the Journal of Marketing Research.

Their finding is counterintuitive to many people, but not those who love doing things on their own. In her book on the joys of traveling alone, Alone Time, Stephanie Rosenbloom said, “Alone, we can develop our aesthetic sense at our own pace,” and “Alone, I could listen to the rain come down, listen to it in a way you can’t when someone else is around, with bodily stillness.”

Other people can be distracting.

Yuechen Wu and her colleagues agree that people doing fun things on their own have the advantage of greater focus than people sharing their leisure experiences. If you are traveling with another person, and you are not just taking a structured tour, you need to be sensitive not just to what you want but what the other person wants.

How interested are they, really, in each possible stop? In what order do they want to take in each attraction? How long do they want to spend at each? Do they want to talk about everything all along the way or have some quiet time to really focus on what they are experiencing?

The psychology may be the same for other kinds of fun experiences, too, such as festivals, theme parks, museums, aquariums, and sporting events. If you go with another person, and you are not sure about their preferences, then instead of fully savoring the amusements or the art or the fish or the athletic feats, part of your mind is going to be preoccupied with wondering about the other person’s experiences. That distraction can undermine your own experiences. You would enjoy the events more if you were alone.

In one of the studies that Wu and her colleagues conducted to test those ideas, students got to look at posters of movies that were being shown at a local film festival, with an opportunity to win a free ticket to their favorite one. They viewed the posters, and the accompanying descriptions of the movies, on a computer. Some of the students did this on their own. They decided for themselves how long to look at each poster and each description and in what order. The other students sat next to another student and looked at the posters on the same computer. They figured out together how to navigate the task, and they were allowed to socialize with each other as much as they wanted. That should have been fun, right?

Not so much, especially if the students looking at the posters in pairs had no idea how interested their partner really was in the movies. The students who looked at the posters alone enjoyed the experience more than they did. As the researchers predicted, the students who got to look at the posters by themselves were able to focus better, and that seemed to explain why they enjoyed the experience more.

In a similar study in which students explored photos from a National Geographic Instagram account, the students viewing the photos alone again enjoyed the experience more than students who watched in pairs and had to decide together what pictures to look at and for how long. The students watching on their own also had a better memory for what they had seen. That again suggests that they were less distracted and got to focus more on the aesthetic experience than the students watching in pairs, who may have been worried about whether the other person wished they would hurry up and move on to the next photo.

Is there any way around the problem of distraction?

What if the students viewing the movie posters in pairs got some information about the other person’s interests?

Before they started looking at the posters, all the students answered the question, “To what extent are you interested in learning about the movies to be featured in the festival?” Half of the students watching in pairs told each other their answers to that question. That helped. Those students enjoyed the experience just as much as the students who were looking at the posters by themselves.

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What if there is some fun experience you really want to savor, but you are stuck going with another person? One possibility, the authors suggest, is to discuss the outing in advance, so you have a better idea of the other person’s actual interests. Then you won’t be so distracted by wondering about that.

The authors also found that other people are less distracting when you are just trying to get something done (such as buying groceries), and you are not out to have fun. When you are trying to have fun, hanging out with an acquaintance rather than a friend won’t help with the problem of distraction. Both are equally distracting, the researchers found.

Making a statement.

Wu and her colleagues are not saying that you can’t have fun with other people, sometimes even more fun than when you are alone. It can be interesting to compare notes on what you are experiencing, and you can enjoy the pleasure of each other’s company. Plus, if you are doing something structured, such as a guided tour, then you don’t need to wonder whether your partner has the same preferences you do about which stops to take in and how long to spend at each—that’s all been decided.

Many people also like doing things in public with other people because they think it increases their status to be out enjoying themselves with others. “Hey, look, I have friends!” But when people go out to have fun on their own, they are making a different statement, a statement of self-confidence: “I am comfortable on my own.” They came for the art or the music or the game, and they are going to focus on it and enjoy it to the fullest, without worrying about what anyone else might be thinking. You might even say they are badasses.