Personally, whenever I have to interact with strangers and people in general, I've noticed how hard it is for me to ignore someone in person versus on the phone — like running into a surveyor in person versus hanging up a telemarketer's call. I knew this wasn't just me, because my friend felt the exact same.

So what about others? We decided to test this new tidbit of info through good ol' scientific research: prank calls — to friends, of course. We didn't want to harass anyone, but at the same time, we did want to gauge how people really interact with supposedly confused strangers over the phone.

As we already know, a device's screen provides a mask for people to hide behind. It enables them to bring out their worst selves because of the security blanket it provides. Human interaction comes to a sudden halt when people are concealed behind their clear glass screen. “No one can see me, so why does it matter?” This mentality is the root of the problem.

So it shouldn't have been a shocker that despite the fact we personally knew and were friends with the people we were prank calling, their reactions were the total opposite of friendly when they perceived themselves to be speaking with a stranger on the other end of the call.

We used auto-generated prank calls, so every message sounded legitimate and believable. One call message involved a random guy telling the "prankee" that his daughter had kicked the caller's dog — an odd topic to bring up, but the point was to see how those pranked would express their confusion or annoyance.

And as expected, most of our friends and acquaintances who picked up our calls came off as rude and impolite in contrast to their true nature, as we knew them. When our friends accepted the calls, they were unaware that they were speaking to someone they knew, and their tone changed completely. When interacting with strangers in person, people are generally politely friendly.

On the phone, however? There's little to no friendly at all. Rather, all our friends gave one word answers, didn't even initiate the conversation and even hung up mid-call. And they weren't exactly wrong to do so, because isn't that the socially acceptable norm of how to deal with phone calls from strangers?

Phone calls allow us to hide behind a blank mask, a blank identity, so there are no immediate visible repercussions to abruptly hanging up a call or losing your temper. Would they do the same if this were a call from an officer? Most likely not. But telemarketers, accidental calls or even just strangers hoping to dial up another talkative stranger — they are presented a "do not disturb" message simply because we feel that message is not relevant to us. We don't care, and we'd rather they not give us a reason to, either.

We wonder, what does that say about the limits of human interaction today, despite the fact we possess the technology to talk to someone halfway across the world? And what does this say about us, who don't think twice about hanging up on a stranger?