I read a very interesting article in the Globe and Mail on Friday about how humans make friends. Animals make friends for either protection against other predators, to collect food together or for mating purposes but what about humans.
Friendship is a “story of loyalty, but also jealousy”. People do have different kinds of friendships like co-workers, family friends, high school/college friends and active friends and it is true to say that "people are very territorial and aware of what their friends' other friendships look like, even if strategically people try to cover this up”. Think of the environment that we work in everyday, I know personally my “outside of work” friends our jealous/envious of what I do and the people I get to be surrounded by everyday. However, I also feel the same way when they are able to be out late during the weekdays and I choose not to go as I have to work early.
A new study "The Alliance Hypothesis for Human Friendship" was done on how “people make friends based on a perception of how they are ranked within their friends' own social circle”. The study was done by Prof. De Scioli and his co-author, Robert Kurzban; they found that the main predictor of friendship is the “value of an ally who ranks you first in importance.”
They took 300 different men and women and asked them to rank 10 friends from closest to least close. They ranked their 10 friends in terms of intelligence, popularity, benefits, friendships, secrets shared, similarities, length of friendship and how often they saw each other. Also they then ranked themselves on how they thought their friend would rank them. There study showed that rankings are a part of friendships, “you care not just how much a friend values you, but how much they value you compared to other friends."
Personally, this was an interesting concept and I challenge you to take this test and see who you think your closest friends are and analyze why you think this.
Friendship is a “story of loyalty, but also jealousy”. People do have different kinds of friendships like co-workers, family friends, high school/college friends and active friends and it is true to say that "people are very territorial and aware of what their friends' other friendships look like, even if strategically people try to cover this up”. Think of the environment that we work in everyday, I know personally my “outside of work” friends our jealous/envious of what I do and the people I get to be surrounded by everyday. However, I also feel the same way when they are able to be out late during the weekdays and I choose not to go as I have to work early.
A new study "The Alliance Hypothesis for Human Friendship" was done on how “people make friends based on a perception of how they are ranked within their friends' own social circle”. The study was done by Prof. De Scioli and his co-author, Robert Kurzban; they found that the main predictor of friendship is the “value of an ally who ranks you first in importance.”
They took 300 different men and women and asked them to rank 10 friends from closest to least close. They ranked their 10 friends in terms of intelligence, popularity, benefits, friendships, secrets shared, similarities, length of friendship and how often they saw each other. Also they then ranked themselves on how they thought their friend would rank them. There study showed that rankings are a part of friendships, “you care not just how much a friend values you, but how much they value you compared to other friends."
Personally, this was an interesting concept and I challenge you to take this test and see who you think your closest friends are and analyze why you think this.
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