Study alone or with friends? What the research says

Study alone or with friends? Do both, in a set order. Learn hard new material on your own first, use friends for company while you work and for quizzing each other afterwards, and keep the talking out of the working time.

The research does not pick one side. Other people help with some parts of studying and get in the way of others, and the split is fairly predictable once you know where to look.

Roomie Cafe is a free focus timer you share with friends. We make it, and we mention it briefly near the end. The rest of this post has nothing to do with us.

What happens to your focus when others are around?

Other people change how you perform, and the direction depends on the task. A 1983 meta analysis of 241 studies with nearly 24,000 participants found that the presence of others increased the speed of simple task performance and decreased the speed of complex task performance. It also found that others impaired accuracy on complex tasks and slightly improved it on simple ones [1].

For studying, that gives you two kinds of work:

• Familiar work, such as flashcards you have seen before or problems of a type you can already solve. Company tends to help here.
• Unfamiliar work, such as a dense reading or a proof you have never seen. Company, and especially conversation, tends to hurt here.

Our post on why focusing alone is harder goes into the background, and the explainer on what body doubling is covers the same idea for people who struggle to start.

Does studying in a group improve results?

Sometimes, and mostly when the group is structured. A 1999 meta analysis by Springer, Stanne and Donovan covered undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering and technology courses. It found that various forms of small group learning promoted greater academic achievement, more favorable attitudes toward learning and more persistence through courses and programs [2]. The review is about those subjects at university, so do not stretch it to every subject or age group.

Note what the studies counted. Small group learning in a course is organised: there is a task, a role for each person and a result to produce. A group of friends who meet to "study" without any of that is a different thing.

Does studying with friends help you stop procrastinating?

It can. Koppenborg and Klingsieck ran two vignette studies with student samples (320 and 193 students). Both found lower state procrastination in group work with interdependence than in individual work, especially in people with high trait procrastination. The difference was larger when the group also made an active commitment to finish the task on time [3]. These were vignettes, where participants imagined a situation, so they show a pattern in how people respond and not what happens in a real library on a Tuesday.

The practical reading is that a shared deadline and a visible commitment do the work. Telling a friend "I will finish these 20 problems in the next hour" beats a vague plan to study together.

Where studying with friends goes wrong

Three problems come up again and again.

1. Talking replaces working. A study session where most of the time is conversation produces conversation. The social facilitation findings above suggest you will do worst on exactly the material you most need to learn.
2. Recalling together is weaker than recalling alone. A 2016 meta analysis of collaborative inhibition found that groups remember less than the same people would alone and then pooled [5]. It is a reason to write down what you remember before you compare notes.
3. Rereading together feels productive. Students in a 2006 experiment who restudied a passage felt more confident than students who took recall tests, but the tested students retained substantially more after two days and a week [4].

Which methods work, alone or together?

A large review of ten learning techniques gave high utility ratings to practice testing and distributed practice, because they help learners of different ages and abilities. It rated highlighting and rereading low, and it lists whether a student studies alone or in a group among the conditions it checks [6]. Neither technique needs a group, and both fit into one.

How to combine both in one session

1. Agree on the plan first. Each person says what they will do in the block, for example 20 problems or two chapters. This is the commitment that [3] linked to less procrastination.
2. Start a timer together. 25 minutes is a common block. Phones away, cameras optional, nobody talks.
3. Work alone, side by side. Use the block for the first pass on new material or for practice questions.
4. Write what you remember. Close the book and put down what you can recall, on your own, before anyone compares [5].
5. Quiz each other on the gaps. Spend the last 10 minutes asking each other the questions you missed. This is where a group earns its place.
6. Repeat on another day. Spreading sessions out is one of the techniques that earned a high utility rating [6].

For a longer list of study tips, see our guide on how to focus on studying. For tools that fit this routine, see how to study with friends online.

When studying alone is the better choice

Choose to study alone when the material is new and difficult, when your friends are also your main source of distraction, or when you need to work out where your own gaps are. You can still use company without conversation: a quiet library or a shared timer gives you the presence without the chat.

Where Roomie Cafe fits

Roomie Cafe is a free focus timer you share with friends. You start a session, friends see you are focusing, and you can run the same 25 minute blocks together while each of you works on your own thing. You can try it at roomie.cafe or read why we built it in our manifesto.

FAQ

Is it better to study alone or with friends?

Alone for the first pass over new, hard material, and with friends for company, accountability and quizzing each other afterwards. The research points to the task and how the group is organised, not a single winner.

Is group study more effective than individual study?

Structured small group learning had positive effects on achievement in a meta analysis of undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering and technology courses [2]. Unstructured group chat has no such evidence behind it.

Why do I study better with other people around?

Having others nearby tends to speed up simple or familiar tasks [1], and a shared commitment can lower procrastination [3]. If you only focus when someone is there, body doubling may be the term you are looking for.

References

1. Bond, C. F., & Titus, L. J. (1983). Social facilitation: A meta-analysis of 241 studies. Psychological Bulletin, 94(2), 265 to 292.
2. Springer, L., Stanne, M. E., & Donovan, S. S. (1999). Effects of small-group learning on undergraduates in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 69(1), 21 to 51.
3. Koppenborg, M., & Klingsieck, K. B. (2022). Social factors of procrastination: Group work can reduce procrastination among students. Social Psychology of Education, 25(1), 249 to 274.
4. Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249 to 255.
5. Marion, S. B., & Thorley, C. (2016). A meta-analytic review of collaborative inhibition and postcollaborative memory: Testing the predictions of the retrieval strategy disruption hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 142(11), 1141 to 1164.
6. Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4 to 58.