15 ms·

Sex Differences in Friendship Preferences

169 points by steelstraw 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
openknot 5y ago
Important limitations of the study are hidden behind the paywall. From the Methods section in the full paper: From Study 1: "Participants (N = 213, 109 women) were recruited from a small Northeastern college in exchange for partial course credit or a lottery entry for a $40 gift card. Of these participants, 190 (95 women) completed all focal variables and were included in further analyses. Sample size was determined by the number of participants researchers were able to recruit over the course of one semester. Sensitivity analyses indicated we have 0.80 power to detect an effect size of partial η2 = 0.076 for focal predictions. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 23 (M = 19.82 years, SD = 1.31). The majority of participants identified as White (75%), 14% identified as Asian, 4% as Hispanic/Latino, and 3% as Black." From Study 2: "U.S. Participants (N = 306, 141 women) were recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk and received $1.00 compensation. Given our shift from ‘ideal’ to actual friends, we anticipated a reduction in the effect size of our predicted sex differences and aimed to recruit a 50% larger sample than that of Study 1. Sensitivity analyses indicated that our sample size allowed us to detect effect sizes of partial η2 = 0.003 with 0.80 power. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 84 (M = 35.22, SD = 11.29) and primarily identified as White (74%) or Black (9%)." From Study 3: "U.S. Participants (N = 250; 97 women) were recruited through TurkPrime and received $1.00 for completing the study. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 70 (M = 34.43, SD = 9.88). Sensitivity analysis indicated that we were able to detect small effects (f < 0.10) with 0.80 power assuming 0.5 correlation between measures. The majority of participants identified as White (70%), 11% identified as Black, 7% as Asian, 6% as Hispanic/Latinx, 2% as multi-racial, 1% as American Indian, and 1% as Pacific Islander." I hope that a user with more research experience than me can chime in. In the meantime, it looks like the study's conclusions mainly apply to: -Undergraduate students in a specific American university located in the Northeast and -People accepting paid jobs on Mechanical Turk.
- aradox66 5y ago
- xapata 5y ago
  It's reasonable to worry about confounding factors, but one should hypothesize what they are as part of the criticism.
  - openknot 5y ago
    To improve my criticism (open to correction, especially because I don't have a background in academic psychology), I hypothesize that the paper's results don't apply and can't be generalized to the broader U.S. population. For Study 1, I specifically think that one's views on friendship are shaped by the people around them (so the views of undergraduates on friendship in a small Northeastern college might be different than a large state school in Texas or California). Views on friendship may also change after graduating university (where it's harder to make friends), and may also be different than views from people who have never attended (e.g. people in small towns in a trade or who have spent a career enlisted in the military). For Studies 2-3 (this is likely where my reasoning is shakiest), I hypothesize that people on Mechanical Turk represent a small subset of the U.S. population, and most have specific shared beliefs (that motivate them to trade time doing fairly simple tasks for money). It's possible that some people are on Mechanical Turk for fun or specifically to learn more about research by participating in online studies, but I hypothesize that this is a negligible part of the population. In short, I'm not convinced that the study's design makes its conclusions applicable to most women and men in the United States population.
    - xapata 5y ago
      The fact that a sample is a tiny part of the population is irrelevant. The question is how that sample differs from the population in a way that correlates with the explained/dependant variable, but is not included as an explanatory/independent variable. Your point that views on friendship may change over time is a strong criticism. The criticism of the Turk selection is weak as written. How does spending time on Turk relate to friendship preferences?
kccqzy 5y ago
> we find that men, compared to women, more highly value same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status, possess wealth, and afford access to potential mates. In contrast, women, compared to men, more highly value friends who provide emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information. This is exactly my experience here. This is the reason why as a man, I instinctively find female friends more trustworthy. When I experience a problem in life, female friends help me a lot more than my male friends do. The retention rate is also different. A lot more of the female friends I made earlier in my life remained as friends than male friends I made.
- mgh2 5y ago
  It will be interesting to see if this affects the famous "friend zone" https://quillette.com/2021/06/28/mate-selection-for-modernity/ https://quillette.com/2021/06/28/mate-selection-for-modernit...
  - watwut 5y ago
    Friends zone otherwise known as "she does not want to date me, but is polite to me, what a bi...
    - arvinsim 5y ago
      I find it interesting that many people try to invalidate the feeling of being friendzone. I find it as a natural biological reaction to not getting the relationship one wants. That being said, I think the best way to deal with being friendzoned is to be honest about one's feelings and end the friendship. No use in being around people if it makes one bitter.
      - watwut 5y ago
        It is annoying. Because when I was single, into a guy friend who was not into me, the only sane reaction was to say to yourself "it sux move over". It was 100% not blaming him or acting like he has done something wrong. Anything else would be being crazy. Friendzone is not something mean a girl do to you. It is her not wanting to date you. Don't pretend friendship if you are not actually interested in friendship.
kodah 5y ago
The conclusion comes off as a trope and I can't access the paper to see how this was concluded.
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  Sometimes you do experiments to see if a trope is true or not and it turns out to be true. With posts like these though, I don’t think we should over analyse the validity of the results. Instead we should ask ourselves if it rings true for each of us personally and then reconsider our friendships. Maybe we need to be better friends to some people.
  - kodah 5y ago
    Except it's not. Among my male friends we have far closer relationships and I wouldn't describe any of them as status seeking. To quote someone with access to the paper: > From Study 1: "Participants (N = 213, 109 women) were recruited from a small Northeastern college in exchange for partial course credit or a lottery entry for a $40 gift card. Of these participants, 190 (95 women) completed all focal variables and were included in further analyses. Sample size was determined by the number of participants researchers were able to recruit over the course of one semester. Sensitivity analyses indicated we have 0.80 power to detect an effect size of partial η2 = 0.076 for focal predictions. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 23 (M = 19.82 years, SD = 1.31). The majority of participants identified as White (75%), 14% identified as Asian, 4% as Hispanic/Latino, and 3% as Black." > From Study 2: "U.S. Participants (N = 306, 141 women) were recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk and received $1.00 compensation. Given our shift from ‘ideal’ to actual friends, we anticipated a reduction in the effect size of our predicted sex differences and aimed to recruit a 50% larger sample than that of Study 1. Sensitivity analyses indicated that our sample size allowed us to detect effect sizes of partial η2 = 0.003 with 0.80 power. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 84 (M = 35.22, SD = 11.29) and primarily identified as White (74%) or Black (9%)." > From Study 3: "U.S. Participants (N = 250; 97 women) were recruited through TurkPrime and received $1.00 for completing the study. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 70 (M = 34.43, SD = 9.88). Sensitivity analysis indicated that we were able to detect small effects (f < 0.10) with 0.80 power assuming 0.5 correlation between measures. The majority of participants identified as White (70%), 11% identified as Black, 7% as Asian, 6% as Hispanic/Latinx, 2% as multi-racial, 1% as American Indian, and 1% as Pacific Islander." The thing that stands out to me is that a group of people thought it'd be appropriate to classify all or most men and women based on a specific college and Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
lolinder 5y ago
You can follow a link here to get full access to the paper (the HTML button): https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&q=Sex+differences+in+friendship+preferences+Keelah+E.G.Williams+Ashley+M.Rankin&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&q=Sex... ScienceDirect paywalls papers unless you arrive via Google Scholar. Edit: this only works if you're logged in to a Google account.
nkmnz 5y ago
> useful social information Academic language for gossip?
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  Academic language for "information leading to access to mates". Which is what most gossip is at root. It has always been useful in that sense. It lets you know, at root, who to stay away from, and who might be good to take a closer look at.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  I flashed on Thermians from Galaxy Quest with their "historical documents."
- ncpa-cpl 5y ago
  I'll start using this phrase on my day to day.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  Where gossip is a lay term for “distributed trust-building.”
strickman 5y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP4IyBal1xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP4IyBal1xg
d4nt 5y ago
I’m a 42 year old male and have found it very hard, my whole life, to establish meaningful friendships with other men. I have many acquaintances, I’m not shy or socially awkward. E.g. When I was running a business I would often go to business networking events alone, start conversations with people, establish a rapport and spend hours chatting, but all those interactions have essentially left me with one good friend. I’ve often found it easier to establish friendships with women, but (being straight) they get complicated. Either I develop feelings, or they do, or there’s a suspicion from someone’s parter about the real nature of our relationship. It’s just too problematic. I think the female “model” of friendships outlined in the abstract just makes more sense to me. “emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information” is what I want from a friendship. I suspect there are other men in this position and that the dominant male “model” of friendship that we have (and which is outlined in this article) is more cultural than biological. But I have no proof. What do you think?
- marktangotango 5y ago
  > I’m a 42 year old male and have found it very hard, my whole life, to establish meaningful friendships with other men. Same here. Maybe you, like me, have none of the characteristics the fine article mentions? > (men) value same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status, possess wealth, and afford access to potential mates.
  - xapata 5y ago
    Interestingly, having female friends to fulfill the need for emotional support will create the "access to potential mates" characteristic that makes it easier to have male friends.
  - bilbo0s 5y ago
    I think it may be even deeper. I have 3 male friends who are extremely close types. And others I would say are very close types. However, they are not particularly wealthy, afford me no access to potential mates, and are definitely not what anyone would term "physically formidable". (Maybe one is? If you only look at his height and ignore his freakishly gangly frame.) Point is, I was willing to initiate friendships with them 25 years ago or whatever despite them checking none of the boxes I should have been looking for. (According to the study). I wonder if most men are simply unwilling to do that? Maybe most men actually do look for those things, and will never consider friendships with any man who doesn't have them? There is a concept in dating called "settling". I wonder if most men are "unwilling to settle"? So, you're right, it is possible the commenter has none of those things, but it's equally possible that the commenter has all of those things, and simply wants to be around the rest of the "cool kids"?
polote 5y ago
What is the point of posting a link to HN that nobody can read ?
- lolinder 5y ago
  They may not have realized that no one can read it. ScienceDirect silently lets you past the paywall if you arrive from Google Scholar. I imagine that HN strips query parameters, and even if it doesn't, the token is only usable by one person. You can access the full HTML by clicking the link here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&q=Sex+differences+in+friendship+preferences+Keelah+E.G.Williams+Ashley+M.Rankin&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&q=Sex... Edit: this only works if you're logged in to a Google account.
  - momenti 5y ago
    This does not work here (Europe).
    - lolinder 5y ago
      That may be. I also just learned that you need to be logged into a Google account. It's not a great solution anyway, a far cry from open access. But I feel like any hole in a research paywall should be public knowledge, however small and clunky it maybe.
      - momenti 5y ago
        I am logged in.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    This isn't working in the US. I'm logged into Google.
- makz 5y ago
  That’s exactly the fun of HN.
0xbadcafebee 5y ago
The study shows that humans are susceptible to gender and cultural stereotypes. Men want to be around the stereotypical male, women want to be around the stereotypical woman - but only in the culture that this study was taken in. > Across three studies (N = 745) with U.S. participants All this tells us is there's a trend in heterosexual friendships in the US. If they ran this study in multiple countries with different cultures they'd get different results. > Indeed, a fruitful avenue for future research would be to examine friendship preferences across cultures.
- foogazi 5y ago
  > The study shows that humans are susceptible to gender and cultural stereotypes. Susceptible? Where do you think stereotypes come from ?
  - 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
    Biases, heuristics, group dynamics, social reinforcement.
insickness 5y ago
My observation is that men tend more to form friendships around activities such as sports, hobbies, etc., while women tend more toward emotional support, as the article states.
- jdr23bc 5y ago
  I agree! As a man I find it much easier to make friends with men or women when there is a shared project or sport. On the other hand my wife seems to get friends this way: go to party > meet person > coffee date > boom. friends. for me, arranging a 'friend' date with no goal other than to get acquainted seems awkward. Too intimate, whether with a man or a woman.
  - antisthenes 5y ago
    Men form relationships that way, because activity is the best way to test out what kind of person they are. What things they are skilled at, do they take initiative, how do others respond to them? Basically, are they going to be a valuable member of the group or not. It's a benign hazing ritual to test the quality of the man.
    - insickness 5y ago
      It's possible that at first it's a test, but even when I'm close friends with men, I tend to talk "shop" rather than talk about feelings and emotional states.
      - antisthenes 5y ago
        Right, but before you can talk shop, you gotta figure out if they are competent at all in anything. There are definitely people I've met who will try to talk shop, but it becomes immediately apparent that they are just trying to BS their way through everything.
guilhas 5y ago
So man prefer men and women women. Or rather maybe the study is just observing that men and women tend to friendship more between themselves Friendship is quite complicated and high maintenance. You really don't have the luxury to choose who to make friends with, their attributes, whom to keep long term, and how responsive they'll be. It mostly just happens based on those around you, neighborhood, school, family friends, university, work...
brohoolio 5y ago
This is too small a study to do this, but I’d be curious if the observations would hold up across various gender identities and the sexuality spectrum. What would gay men prefer? What about lesbians? What about non-binary folks?
- throwaheyy 5y ago
  As a gay man, for same-sex friendships I find that I have gravitated towards men that have some of both categories, with some differences accounting for life circumstances or other uncontrollable factors, tact and human decency. Maybe not “physically formidable”, but being fit/looking after yourself. Maybe not “high wealth”, but financially responsible and not ostentatious. “High status” is a self mindset. I’m not sure what this paper’s definition of it is. “Access to potential mates” sounds overly reductive but having some friends makes one a more attractive and interesting person in general. “Emotional support” in willingness to listen, empathize, and not be a narcissist. “Intimacy” in trustworthiness and dependability. “Useful social information” but don’t be a gossip.
  - jdr23bc 5y ago
    > “Access to potential mates” sounds overly reductive but having some friends makes one a more attractive and interesting person in general. this makes me think of that fact "the average person's (sex) partner has had more partners" Maybe it holds true for friends. the average person's friend has more friends. Although friendships are different than a count of sex. partners. you can only have so many on going friendships. If it's true then the ratio is probably lower.
- telman17 5y ago
  Lesbian here. My closest friends have been straight men for years. I'm also a software developer so that's who I'm mostly surrounded by. The women I am friends with are usually 1) straight and 2) do not typically share my hobbies and so our conversations tend to be more shallow. However when I was in high school my closest friends were female. I have no idea if my experience is common or not. Also not to nitpick but non-binary has absolutely nothing to do with being gay or lesbian. It's not the "third" option. You can be gay and non-binary.
brap 5y ago
The conclusions really didn’t resonate with me. Not the male or female preferences. As a male in my 30s, I just realized that every single close friend I had throughout my life is simply a person who made me laugh, and I made them laugh. A shared sense of humor, that’s literally all it is. And it’s not like my friendships are/were shallow or anything, I have friends who I will gladly give a kidney to and I’m sure they’ll do the same for me. But I think humor was really the foundation of it all.
- sdze 5y ago
  Are you a US-American?
  - brap 5y ago
    No, why? The kidney?
    - sdze 5y ago
      Because the study was conducted with US-Participants. In my opinion a multi-center study is needed. I believe other parts of the world have different values in friendships. I agree with you. My best friend was poor (not anymore, he is a MD now) and had nothing.
      - kingcharles 5y ago
        Other cultures would have vastly skewed results: for instance, my girlfriend is Qatari, her interaction with males outside her family is very strictly limited, and vice-versa for the males. Segregation between genders is enormous in some cultures.
        pedrosorio 5y ago
        This study is about same-sex friendship preferences, so the frequency of interaction with members of the opposite sex in these cultures is not the most relevant. That being said, I agree with the person you are replying to. Differences in friendship preferences by men and women could be highly variable in different cultures, so one shouldn't read too much into a study that looks exclusively at US participants.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Across evolutionary time, some of the many challenges that friendships helped to solve may have differed between men and women.... This is just a "post child" for the replication crisis. It doesn't look at region, nation, socio-economic group, gender identity and so forth. It also doesn't look at actual friendships but friendship-preferences expressed on in survey (which I might speculate would be more influenced by social expectations than actual friendships but the point is "we don't know"). And then it add "evolutionary" to give a nice feel...
jcims 5y ago
It would be interesting to see what women want from male friends and vice versa.
karpierz 5y ago
Issues: Study 1 is across college-aged kids who are willing to participate in a psych study (in exchange for partial course credit or a lottery entry for a $40 gift card, IE they're psych students). Unclear why you'd generalize a study run across a single college, within a group of students who self-selected into your course, and draw conclusions about all men and women. In addition, you're asking people what they prefer in their friends; not measuring it. Study 2 isn't controlling for variance in the underlying traits between the genders. All it shows is that if your best friend is male, they're likely to have different traits than if they're female. It does not show that you picked male/female friends because of those traits. So for example, when they find "men's same-sex best friends were more likely to possess qualities of physical strength", what they've discovered is not that men look for physically strong friends, but that men are usually stronger than women. Study 3 is across people working on Mechanical Turk. That already skews your sample. It asks participants to weight the relative aspects of what they look for in a friend. But this relies on the participant being aware of what they look for. If someone thinks that they don't need emotional comfort from friends, they'll say so, but it doesn't mean that it's true. tl;dr: This study is methodologically flawed, and the conclusions it draws are mostly to be splashy and show up in random articles. It'll be shared because people resonate with its conclusion and not because it contains robust evidence of its conclusion.
- fblp 5y ago
  This needs more upvotes thank you for reading supporting studies.
sdze 5y ago
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  There's an irony to this comment I suspect you may miss...
musesum 5y ago
I wonder how inter M/F/T? friendships are affected by the DRD4 gene? https://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20101201/is-infidelity-genetic#:~:text=Influence%20of%20Genetics%20in%20the%20Bedroom&text=People%20with%20a%20genetic%20variation,not%20have%20this%20genetic%20variation https://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20101201/is-inf....
fallingfrog 5y ago
“.. men, compared to women, more highly value same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status, possess wealth, and afford access to potential mates.” Barf. What kind of misanthrope thinks like this. I don’t believe for a minute that this is how typical men think.
- post_from_work 5y ago
  Consider the opposite characteristics. As a guy, I don't make time to hang out with other guys who are woefully out of shape / hideously ugly, broke, and with no Game(tm). Those people are not Force Multipliers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication ), so why would I allocate my most precious resource, my time, to them?
  - antisthenes 5y ago
    There's a difference between what people describe their ideal friends as and who they actually have as friends. It's not like the study actually brought in their friends and examined whether those preferences have anything to do with reality.
  - fallingfrog 5y ago
    If your friends abandon you because you gained weight, or lost your job, or burned your face- those people were never your friends.
    - post_from_work 5y ago
      You are shooting at strawmen. No one is discussing severing existing relationship bonds due to evolving life circumstances. There are undoubtedly far more variables in such an equation, with complex mitigating factors. The article is about ideal preferences. Exercising those preferences, often towards objectively-superior utility characteristics, is not misanthropic. That line of thought would make about as much sense as saying "all lesbians are inherently misandrist". Choosing A over B does not imply any hatred of {B}, or of {A+B} in general.
huetius 5y ago
Utilitarian, manipulative society which views men and women as non-complementary and unequal finds evidence of those values in practice. More at nine.
post_from_work 5y ago
- Firadeoclus 5y ago
  > Why would I ever go to a woman for "emotional support"? Her lived experience and frame of reference will be so radically different from my own that her advice is unlikely to be applicable. When I need support, I call my guy friends with ("Hey, I haven't encountered this problem in my life before. I believe you had a similar scenario in the past. Suggestions?"), and they do the same. Emotional support goes beyond advice and suggestions. In fact, for many people (including many men), advice is the least important part and often unwelcome at first. What people are looking for is empathy, being heard and validated. Therapists don't share the same lived experience as most of their clients, yet they can still be exceptionally skilled at providing emotional support.
  - post_from_work 5y ago
    >>> In fact, for many people (including many men), advice is the least important part and often unwelcome at first. What people are looking for is empathy, being heard and validated. Maybe I'm just wired differently, but I usually come away a bit frustrated if I reach out to someone and the conversation is basically "I feel you and can commiserate. But I don't have any recommended actions." In contrast, I had a former roommate who would point out: "See at Step 2? You messed up by taking Action X. Next time do Action Y, and follow up with Action Z at Step 3. That's how you avoid this problem." I don't always agree with his advice or conclusions, but he gives me something actionable, or at least something that triggers thinking through a modified solution to whatever problem I'm trying to overcome.
saxophoneman 5y ago
danielyaa5 5y ago
yason 5y ago
I've only ever had few male friends in my life. I surely have had male "buddies" I've acquainted with, usually around activities. A common interest works with most men but leaves the "buddyship" very much in the shallow side and due to the lack of depth these buddyships tend to fade out as hobbies, locations and activities change. But male friends, except for a couple of childhood friends, no. In contrast, female friends - plenty, from good acquaintances to close friends, with some female friendships lasting for decades. With friends as opposed to buddies I mean the kind of friends I can talk to about anything, share my feelings, ponder about life, relationships, people. And that kind of friendships are also something that you can latch onto again and again even if you had a gap of a few years in between. Friendships are anchored deeper, being less dependent on the circumstances at each moment in life. I wouldn't mind having male friendships too but it has just never panned out as easily as with women, really. I guess that is because women are grown to being more open about sharing that sort of internal psychological and emotional scenery while men often aren't. But the thing is that we all have that side inside of us and it's screaming to be heard. So I'm very much lucky in having been able to start, enjoy, and maintain friendships with women -- even through my early romantic interests with other women and later my marriage with my wife. I would have been a sad, lone person without them.

169 points by steelstraw 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Important limitations of the study are hidden behind the paywall. From the Methods section in the full paper: From Study 1: "Participants (N = 213, 109 women) were recruited from a small Northeastern college in exchange for partial course credit or a lottery entry for a $40 gift card. Of these participants, 190 (95 women) completed all focal variables and were included in further analyses. Sample size was determined by the number of participants researchers were able to recruit over the course of one semester. Sensitivity analyses indicated we have 0.80 power to detect an effect size of partial η2 = 0.076 for focal predictions. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 23 (M = 19.82 years, SD = 1.31). The majority of participants identified as White (75%), 14% identified as Asian, 4% as Hispanic/Latino, and 3% as Black." From Study 2: "U.S. Participants (N = 306, 141 women) were recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk and received $1.00 compensation. Given our shift from ‘ideal’ to actual friends, we anticipated a reduction in the effect size of our predicted sex differences and aimed to recruit a 50% larger sample than that of Study 1. Sensitivity analyses indicated that our sample size allowed us to detect effect sizes of partial η2 = 0.003 with 0.80 power. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 84 (M = 35.22, SD = 11.29) and primarily identified as White (74%) or Black (9%)." From Study 3: "U.S. Participants (N = 250; 97 women) were recruited through TurkPrime and received $1.00 for completing the study. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 70 (M = 34.43, SD = 9.88). Sensitivity analysis indicated that we were able to detect small effects (f < 0.10) with 0.80 power assuming 0.5 correlation between measures. The majority of participants identified as White (70%), 11% identified as Black, 7% as Asian, 6% as Hispanic/Latinx, 2% as multi-racial, 1% as American Indian, and 1% as Pacific Islander." I hope that a user with more research experience than me can chime in. In the meantime, it looks like the study's conclusions mainly apply to: -Undergraduate students in a specific American university located in the Northeast and -People accepting paid jobs on Mechanical Turk.

aradox66 5y ago
xapata 5y ago
It's reasonable to worry about confounding factors, but one should hypothesize what they are as part of the criticism.
- openknot 5y ago
  To improve my criticism (open to correction, especially because I don't have a background in academic psychology), I hypothesize that the paper's results don't apply and can't be generalized to the broader U.S. population. For Study 1, I specifically think that one's views on friendship are shaped by the people around them (so the views of undergraduates on friendship in a small Northeastern college might be different than a large state school in Texas or California). Views on friendship may also change after graduating university (where it's harder to make friends), and may also be different than views from people who have never attended (e.g. people in small towns in a trade or who have spent a career enlisted in the military). For Studies 2-3 (this is likely where my reasoning is shakiest), I hypothesize that people on Mechanical Turk represent a small subset of the U.S. population, and most have specific shared beliefs (that motivate them to trade time doing fairly simple tasks for money). It's possible that some people are on Mechanical Turk for fun or specifically to learn more about research by participating in online studies, but I hypothesize that this is a negligible part of the population. In short, I'm not convinced that the study's design makes its conclusions applicable to most women and men in the United States population.
  - xapata 5y ago
    The fact that a sample is a tiny part of the population is irrelevant. The question is how that sample differs from the population in a way that correlates with the explained/dependant variable, but is not included as an explanatory/independent variable. Your point that views on friendship may change over time is a strong criticism. The criticism of the Turk selection is weak as written. How does spending time on Turk relate to friendship preferences?

kccqzy 5y ago

> we find that men, compared to women, more highly value same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status, possess wealth, and afford access to potential mates. In contrast, women, compared to men, more highly value friends who provide emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information. This is exactly my experience here. This is the reason why as a man, I instinctively find female friends more trustworthy. When I experience a problem in life, female friends help me a lot more than my male friends do. The retention rate is also different. A lot more of the female friends I made earlier in my life remained as friends than male friends I made.

mgh2 5y ago
It will be interesting to see if this affects the famous "friend zone" https://quillette.com/2021/06/28/mate-selection-for-modernity/ https://quillette.com/2021/06/28/mate-selection-for-modernit...
- watwut 5y ago
  Friends zone otherwise known as "she does not want to date me, but is polite to me, what a bi...
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    I find it interesting that many people try to invalidate the feeling of being friendzone. I find it as a natural biological reaction to not getting the relationship one wants. That being said, I think the best way to deal with being friendzoned is to be honest about one's feelings and end the friendship. No use in being around people if it makes one bitter.
    - watwut 5y ago
      It is annoying. Because when I was single, into a guy friend who was not into me, the only sane reaction was to say to yourself "it sux move over". It was 100% not blaming him or acting like he has done something wrong. Anything else would be being crazy. Friendzone is not something mean a girl do to you. It is her not wanting to date you. Don't pretend friendship if you are not actually interested in friendship.

kodah 5y ago

The conclusion comes off as a trope and I can't access the paper to see how this was concluded.

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
Sometimes you do experiments to see if a trope is true or not and it turns out to be true. With posts like these though, I don’t think we should over analyse the validity of the results. Instead we should ask ourselves if it rings true for each of us personally and then reconsider our friendships. Maybe we need to be better friends to some people.
- kodah 5y ago
  Except it's not. Among my male friends we have far closer relationships and I wouldn't describe any of them as status seeking. To quote someone with access to the paper: > From Study 1: "Participants (N = 213, 109 women) were recruited from a small Northeastern college in exchange for partial course credit or a lottery entry for a $40 gift card. Of these participants, 190 (95 women) completed all focal variables and were included in further analyses. Sample size was determined by the number of participants researchers were able to recruit over the course of one semester. Sensitivity analyses indicated we have 0.80 power to detect an effect size of partial η2 = 0.076 for focal predictions. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 23 (M = 19.82 years, SD = 1.31). The majority of participants identified as White (75%), 14% identified as Asian, 4% as Hispanic/Latino, and 3% as Black." > From Study 2: "U.S. Participants (N = 306, 141 women) were recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk and received $1.00 compensation. Given our shift from ‘ideal’ to actual friends, we anticipated a reduction in the effect size of our predicted sex differences and aimed to recruit a 50% larger sample than that of Study 1. Sensitivity analyses indicated that our sample size allowed us to detect effect sizes of partial η2 = 0.003 with 0.80 power. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 84 (M = 35.22, SD = 11.29) and primarily identified as White (74%) or Black (9%)." > From Study 3: "U.S. Participants (N = 250; 97 women) were recruited through TurkPrime and received $1.00 for completing the study. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 70 (M = 34.43, SD = 9.88). Sensitivity analysis indicated that we were able to detect small effects (f < 0.10) with 0.80 power assuming 0.5 correlation between measures. The majority of participants identified as White (70%), 11% identified as Black, 7% as Asian, 6% as Hispanic/Latinx, 2% as multi-racial, 1% as American Indian, and 1% as Pacific Islander." The thing that stands out to me is that a group of people thought it'd be appropriate to classify all or most men and women based on a specific college and Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

lolinder 5y ago

You can follow a link here to get full access to the paper (the HTML button): https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&q=Sex+differences+in+friendship+preferences+Keelah+E.G.Williams+Ashley+M.Rankin&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&q=Sex... ScienceDirect paywalls papers unless you arrive via Google Scholar. Edit: this only works if you're logged in to a Google account.

nkmnz 5y ago

> useful social information Academic language for gossip?

bilbo0s 5y ago
Academic language for "information leading to access to mates". Which is what most gossip is at root. It has always been useful in that sense. It lets you know, at root, who to stay away from, and who might be good to take a closer look at.
drewcoo 5y ago
I flashed on Thermians from Galaxy Quest with their "historical documents."
ncpa-cpl 5y ago
I'll start using this phrase on my day to day.
ethanbond 5y ago
Where gossip is a lay term for “distributed trust-building.”

strickman 5y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP4IyBal1xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP4IyBal1xg

d4nt 5y ago

I’m a 42 year old male and have found it very hard, my whole life, to establish meaningful friendships with other men. I have many acquaintances, I’m not shy or socially awkward. E.g. When I was running a business I would often go to business networking events alone, start conversations with people, establish a rapport and spend hours chatting, but all those interactions have essentially left me with one good friend. I’ve often found it easier to establish friendships with women, but (being straight) they get complicated. Either I develop feelings, or they do, or there’s a suspicion from someone’s parter about the real nature of our relationship. It’s just too problematic. I think the female “model” of friendships outlined in the abstract just makes more sense to me. “emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information” is what I want from a friendship. I suspect there are other men in this position and that the dominant male “model” of friendship that we have (and which is outlined in this article) is more cultural than biological. But I have no proof. What do you think?

marktangotango 5y ago
> I’m a 42 year old male and have found it very hard, my whole life, to establish meaningful friendships with other men. Same here. Maybe you, like me, have none of the characteristics the fine article mentions? > (men) value same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status, possess wealth, and afford access to potential mates.
- xapata 5y ago
  Interestingly, having female friends to fulfill the need for emotional support will create the "access to potential mates" characteristic that makes it easier to have male friends.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  I think it may be even deeper. I have 3 male friends who are extremely close types. And others I would say are very close types. However, they are not particularly wealthy, afford me no access to potential mates, and are definitely not what anyone would term "physically formidable". (Maybe one is? If you only look at his height and ignore his freakishly gangly frame.) Point is, I was willing to initiate friendships with them 25 years ago or whatever despite them checking none of the boxes I should have been looking for. (According to the study). I wonder if most men are simply unwilling to do that? Maybe most men actually do look for those things, and will never consider friendships with any man who doesn't have them? There is a concept in dating called "settling". I wonder if most men are "unwilling to settle"? So, you're right, it is possible the commenter has none of those things, but it's equally possible that the commenter has all of those things, and simply wants to be around the rest of the "cool kids"?

polote 5y ago

What is the point of posting a link to HN that nobody can read ?

lolinder 5y ago
They may not have realized that no one can read it. ScienceDirect silently lets you past the paywall if you arrive from Google Scholar. I imagine that HN strips query parameters, and even if it doesn't, the token is only usable by one person. You can access the full HTML by clicking the link here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&q=Sex+differences+in+friendship+preferences+Keelah+E.G.Williams+Ashley+M.Rankin&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&q=Sex... Edit: this only works if you're logged in to a Google account.
- momenti 5y ago
  This does not work here (Europe).
  - lolinder 5y ago
    That may be. I also just learned that you need to be logged into a Google account. It's not a great solution anyway, a far cry from open access. But I feel like any hole in a research paywall should be public knowledge, however small and clunky it maybe.
    - momenti 5y ago
      I am logged in.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  This isn't working in the US. I'm logged into Google.
makz 5y ago
That’s exactly the fun of HN.

0xbadcafebee 5y ago

The study shows that humans are susceptible to gender and cultural stereotypes. Men want to be around the stereotypical male, women want to be around the stereotypical woman - but only in the culture that this study was taken in. > Across three studies (N = 745) with U.S. participants All this tells us is there's a trend in heterosexual friendships in the US. If they ran this study in multiple countries with different cultures they'd get different results. > Indeed, a fruitful avenue for future research would be to examine friendship preferences across cultures.

foogazi 5y ago
> The study shows that humans are susceptible to gender and cultural stereotypes. Susceptible? Where do you think stereotypes come from ?
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  Biases, heuristics, group dynamics, social reinforcement.

insickness 5y ago

My observation is that men tend more to form friendships around activities such as sports, hobbies, etc., while women tend more toward emotional support, as the article states.

jdr23bc 5y ago
I agree! As a man I find it much easier to make friends with men or women when there is a shared project or sport. On the other hand my wife seems to get friends this way: go to party > meet person > coffee date > boom. friends. for me, arranging a 'friend' date with no goal other than to get acquainted seems awkward. Too intimate, whether with a man or a woman.
- antisthenes 5y ago
  Men form relationships that way, because activity is the best way to test out what kind of person they are. What things they are skilled at, do they take initiative, how do others respond to them? Basically, are they going to be a valuable member of the group or not. It's a benign hazing ritual to test the quality of the man.
  - insickness 5y ago
    It's possible that at first it's a test, but even when I'm close friends with men, I tend to talk "shop" rather than talk about feelings and emotional states.
    - antisthenes 5y ago
      Right, but before you can talk shop, you gotta figure out if they are competent at all in anything. There are definitely people I've met who will try to talk shop, but it becomes immediately apparent that they are just trying to BS their way through everything.

guilhas 5y ago

So man prefer men and women women. Or rather maybe the study is just observing that men and women tend to friendship more between themselves Friendship is quite complicated and high maintenance. You really don't have the luxury to choose who to make friends with, their attributes, whom to keep long term, and how responsive they'll be. It mostly just happens based on those around you, neighborhood, school, family friends, university, work...

brohoolio 5y ago

This is too small a study to do this, but I’d be curious if the observations would hold up across various gender identities and the sexuality spectrum. What would gay men prefer? What about lesbians? What about non-binary folks?

throwaheyy 5y ago
As a gay man, for same-sex friendships I find that I have gravitated towards men that have some of both categories, with some differences accounting for life circumstances or other uncontrollable factors, tact and human decency. Maybe not “physically formidable”, but being fit/looking after yourself. Maybe not “high wealth”, but financially responsible and not ostentatious. “High status” is a self mindset. I’m not sure what this paper’s definition of it is. “Access to potential mates” sounds overly reductive but having some friends makes one a more attractive and interesting person in general. “Emotional support” in willingness to listen, empathize, and not be a narcissist. “Intimacy” in trustworthiness and dependability. “Useful social information” but don’t be a gossip.
- jdr23bc 5y ago
  > “Access to potential mates” sounds overly reductive but having some friends makes one a more attractive and interesting person in general. this makes me think of that fact "the average person's (sex) partner has had more partners" Maybe it holds true for friends. the average person's friend has more friends. Although friendships are different than a count of sex. partners. you can only have so many on going friendships. If it's true then the ratio is probably lower.
telman17 5y ago
Lesbian here. My closest friends have been straight men for years. I'm also a software developer so that's who I'm mostly surrounded by. The women I am friends with are usually 1) straight and 2) do not typically share my hobbies and so our conversations tend to be more shallow. However when I was in high school my closest friends were female. I have no idea if my experience is common or not. Also not to nitpick but non-binary has absolutely nothing to do with being gay or lesbian. It's not the "third" option. You can be gay and non-binary.

brap 5y ago

The conclusions really didn’t resonate with me. Not the male or female preferences. As a male in my 30s, I just realized that every single close friend I had throughout my life is simply a person who made me laugh, and I made them laugh. A shared sense of humor, that’s literally all it is. And it’s not like my friendships are/were shallow or anything, I have friends who I will gladly give a kidney to and I’m sure they’ll do the same for me. But I think humor was really the foundation of it all.

sdze 5y ago
Are you a US-American?
- brap 5y ago
  No, why? The kidney?
  - sdze 5y ago
    Because the study was conducted with US-Participants. In my opinion a multi-center study is needed. I believe other parts of the world have different values in friendships. I agree with you. My best friend was poor (not anymore, he is a MD now) and had nothing.
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      Other cultures would have vastly skewed results: for instance, my girlfriend is Qatari, her interaction with males outside her family is very strictly limited, and vice-versa for the males. Segregation between genders is enormous in some cultures.
      - pedrosorio 5y ago
        This study is about same-sex friendship preferences, so the frequency of interaction with members of the opposite sex in these cultures is not the most relevant. That being said, I agree with the person you are replying to. Differences in friendship preferences by men and women could be highly variable in different cultures, so one shouldn't read too much into a study that looks exclusively at US participants.

joe_the_user 5y ago

Across evolutionary time, some of the many challenges that friendships helped to solve may have differed between men and women.... This is just a "post child" for the replication crisis. It doesn't look at region, nation, socio-economic group, gender identity and so forth. It also doesn't look at actual friendships but friendship-preferences expressed on in survey (which I might speculate would be more influenced by social expectations than actual friendships but the point is "we don't know"). And then it add "evolutionary" to give a nice feel...

jcims 5y ago

It would be interesting to see what women want from male friends and vice versa.

karpierz 5y ago

Issues: Study 1 is across college-aged kids who are willing to participate in a psych study (in exchange for partial course credit or a lottery entry for a $40 gift card, IE they're psych students). Unclear why you'd generalize a study run across a single college, within a group of students who self-selected into your course, and draw conclusions about all men and women. In addition, you're asking people what they prefer in their friends; not measuring it. Study 2 isn't controlling for variance in the underlying traits between the genders. All it shows is that if your best friend is male, they're likely to have different traits than if they're female. It does not show that you picked male/female friends because of those traits. So for example, when they find "men's same-sex best friends were more likely to possess qualities of physical strength", what they've discovered is not that men look for physically strong friends, but that men are usually stronger than women. Study 3 is across people working on Mechanical Turk. That already skews your sample. It asks participants to weight the relative aspects of what they look for in a friend. But this relies on the participant being aware of what they look for. If someone thinks that they don't need emotional comfort from friends, they'll say so, but it doesn't mean that it's true. tl;dr: This study is methodologically flawed, and the conclusions it draws are mostly to be splashy and show up in random articles. It'll be shared because people resonate with its conclusion and not because it contains robust evidence of its conclusion.

fblp 5y ago
This needs more upvotes thank you for reading supporting studies.

sdze 5y ago

TameAntelope 5y ago
There's an irony to this comment I suspect you may miss...

musesum 5y ago

I wonder how inter M/F/T? friendships are affected by the DRD4 gene? https://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20101201/is-infidelity-genetic#:~:text=Influence%20of%20Genetics%20in%20the%20Bedroom&text=People%20with%20a%20genetic%20variation,not%20have%20this%20genetic%20variation https://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20101201/is-inf....

fallingfrog 5y ago

“.. men, compared to women, more highly value same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status, possess wealth, and afford access to potential mates.” Barf. What kind of misanthrope thinks like this. I don’t believe for a minute that this is how typical men think.

post_from_work 5y ago
Consider the opposite characteristics. As a guy, I don't make time to hang out with other guys who are woefully out of shape / hideously ugly, broke, and with no Game(tm). Those people are not Force Multipliers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication ), so why would I allocate my most precious resource, my time, to them?
- antisthenes 5y ago
  There's a difference between what people describe their ideal friends as and who they actually have as friends. It's not like the study actually brought in their friends and examined whether those preferences have anything to do with reality.
- fallingfrog 5y ago
  If your friends abandon you because you gained weight, or lost your job, or burned your face- those people were never your friends.
  - post_from_work 5y ago
    You are shooting at strawmen. No one is discussing severing existing relationship bonds due to evolving life circumstances. There are undoubtedly far more variables in such an equation, with complex mitigating factors. The article is about ideal preferences. Exercising those preferences, often towards objectively-superior utility characteristics, is not misanthropic. That line of thought would make about as much sense as saying "all lesbians are inherently misandrist". Choosing A over B does not imply any hatred of {B}, or of {A+B} in general.

huetius 5y ago

Utilitarian, manipulative society which views men and women as non-complementary and unequal finds evidence of those values in practice. More at nine.

post_from_work 5y ago

Firadeoclus 5y ago
> Why would I ever go to a woman for "emotional support"? Her lived experience and frame of reference will be so radically different from my own that her advice is unlikely to be applicable. When I need support, I call my guy friends with ("Hey, I haven't encountered this problem in my life before. I believe you had a similar scenario in the past. Suggestions?"), and they do the same. Emotional support goes beyond advice and suggestions. In fact, for many people (including many men), advice is the least important part and often unwelcome at first. What people are looking for is empathy, being heard and validated. Therapists don't share the same lived experience as most of their clients, yet they can still be exceptionally skilled at providing emotional support.
- post_from_work 5y ago
  >>> In fact, for many people (including many men), advice is the least important part and often unwelcome at first. What people are looking for is empathy, being heard and validated. Maybe I'm just wired differently, but I usually come away a bit frustrated if I reach out to someone and the conversation is basically "I feel you and can commiserate. But I don't have any recommended actions." In contrast, I had a former roommate who would point out: "See at Step 2? You messed up by taking Action X. Next time do Action Y, and follow up with Action Z at Step 3. That's how you avoid this problem." I don't always agree with his advice or conclusions, but he gives me something actionable, or at least something that triggers thinking through a modified solution to whatever problem I'm trying to overcome.

saxophoneman 5y ago

danielyaa5 5y ago

yason 5y ago

I've only ever had few male friends in my life. I surely have had male "buddies" I've acquainted with, usually around activities. A common interest works with most men but leaves the "buddyship" very much in the shallow side and due to the lack of depth these buddyships tend to fade out as hobbies, locations and activities change. But male friends, except for a couple of childhood friends, no. In contrast, female friends - plenty, from good acquaintances to close friends, with some female friendships lasting for decades. With friends as opposed to buddies I mean the kind of friends I can talk to about anything, share my feelings, ponder about life, relationships, people. And that kind of friendships are also something that you can latch onto again and again even if you had a gap of a few years in between. Friendships are anchored deeper, being less dependent on the circumstances at each moment in life. I wouldn't mind having male friendships too but it has just never panned out as easily as with women, really. I guess that is because women are grown to being more open about sharing that sort of internal psychological and emotional scenery while men often aren't. But the thing is that we all have that side inside of us and it's screaming to be heard. So I'm very much lucky in having been able to start, enjoy, and maintain friendships with women -- even through my early romantic interests with other women and later my marriage with my wife. I would have been a sad, lone person without them.