In 1974 Phillip Kunz, a sociologist at Brigham Young University, picked 600 names at random from the phone book. He mailed the strangers Christmas cards. Many wrote back. Some replies were “three, four pages long.” Some people kept sending him cards for 15 years.
Reports of how many replied differ. A newspaper account says more than 200 of the 600. Time gives about 20 percent for studies published in 1976 and 2000.
In a study reported in 2015, the social psychologist Brian Meier repeated the test. He mailed hand-signed cards to 755 randomly chosen people. Only 2 percent replied. Meier called the result “unexpectedly low.”