[HN Gopher] Sex Differences in Friendship Preferences
___________________________________________________________________
Sex Differences in Friendship Preferences
Author : steelstraw
Score : 80 points
Date : 2022-01-23 20:47 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| jcims wrote:
| It would be interesting to see what women want from male friends
| and vice versa.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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...
|
| ScienceDirect paywalls papers unless you arrive via Google
| Scholar.
|
| Edit: this only works if you're logged in to a Google account.
| nkmnz wrote:
| > useful social information
|
| Academic language for gossip?
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| I'll start using this phrase on my day to day.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I flashed on Thermians from Galaxy Quest with their "historical
| documents."
| ethanbond wrote:
| Where gossip is a lay term for "distributed trust-building."
| strickman wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP4IyBal1xg
| insickness wrote:
| 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.
| karpierz wrote:
| 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.
| d4nt wrote:
| 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?
| openknot wrote:
| >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 have a similar experience when attending more professional
| environments. However, I think it's easier to create
| relationships marked more by friendly intent -- rather than
| professional advantages -- when working with people outside of
| your industry, especially in non-profit contexts. In these
| contexts, as there are less/no immediate professional
| advantages, you are likely staying in touch due to liking their
| personality.
|
| >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.
|
| I have no problems having a friendly but tactful relationship
| with other men who are competitive, but I would idly prefer a
| close friendship with a guy similar to the friendships I
| experienced in elementary/middle/high school due to spending
| lots of time with the same people. I really missed that kind of
| relationship when I was in university.
|
| However, I've shifted expectations to only expect a "best
| friend"-like relationship (where I can let my guard down and
| act like myself) with a romantic partner. I just don't think
| most people in my bubble are willing to set aside the time and
| energy to nurture and maintain close friendships (e.g. meeting
| up with someone just to hang out or grab dinner) in other
| contexts.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| The problem with reading the results of broad statical analyses
| like these is that it primes you to think about cohorts in a
| homogenous way, whereas the individual differences, which are
| often far greater, are underemphasized by the paper that's
| motivated to establish its relevance
| nicoburns wrote:
| 28 year old male here, and I totally agree (although I've had
| far less problems with female friendships than you). I have
| some male friends, but far fewer, and I think it's because I'm
| looking for this "emotional support, intimacy, and useful
| social information" , and not that many men are open to that.
| PKop wrote:
| I think it is biological, and also that "culture" is generally
| an expression of biology also. Why wouldn't biological factors
| influence the collective expression of human nature? Culture
| doesn't exist in a vacuum outside of these forces.
|
| There are probably some men like you describe but your lack of
| success finding what you're looking for speaks to the
| likelihood the standard model for male friendships closer to
| accurate and more prevalent..and dare I say natural.
|
| Depending on what you actually mean by "intimacy", here's a
| relevant comment I made on another thread about difficulty
| finding friendships for men:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969047
|
| copying below:
|
| "True friendship comes mostly from shared struggle. Think
| sports teams, military, small teams at work, even childhood
| friends and the experience growing up.
|
| It is hard to establish anything meaningful of a connection
| with casual interactions, and expecting to just "party/play
| hard" with people you don't really know is putting the cart
| before the horse. First you must work hard together.
|
| I'd suggest joining a Crossfit gym or similar. I've had great
| success meeting people within the context of group workouts. It
| has regular class schedules, and provides a way to ease into
| social interactions at your own pace as you'll be around the
| same people regularly. Often this leads to opportunities to do
| things together outside of the classes.
|
| Additionally, there are likely individuals with similar
| disinterest in the common activities you mentioned in you CS
| classes. Finding opportunities to work with someone on class
| assignments, studying or projects together would fall in the
| "shared struggle" category."
| k__ wrote:
| Similar "problem" here.
|
| I got raised by my mother alone. My father left when I was 5
| and even before, he was at work all day anyway. Then I got a
| step dad when I was 13, but most of my formative years I was
| raised by my mother alone. I imagine that's one reason for this
| problem.
|
| I only have interest in female friends and basically went all
| polyamory because of that. This way the feelings problem isn't
| a problem anymore.
|
| I had the experience that many people would somehow value me as
| a good friend of them, but I only see them only as an
| acquaintance.
| ronnier wrote:
| You are competition to other men. Why would they invite you
| into their social group and then have to compete with you for
| relationships with women (which are increasingly hard and
| harder for men to secure). That's my crazy theory anyways.
| Before we had hard social and religious contracts to pair one
| man with one woman... so the threat was low. That's all thrown
| out the window now, so there's a real threat that the man you
| make friends with might actually be the person who ruins your
| chance at a relationship -- I think that's in peoples mind.
| Anyways, just a crazy theory.
| pc86 wrote:
| What evidence is there that finding a relationship is
| "increasingly hard[er] and harder for men to secure" compared
| to any other time in history? And what evidence is there that
| monogomy is "thrown out the window now?"
| dnautics wrote:
| likely cultural. There are a lot of (possibly "extreme") male
| environments where males DO provide emotional support to each
| other, though probably at a lower throughput that the "typical
| female" friendship, and where they don't, it's empirically
| dysfunctional -- for example, groups of men living together in
| submarines, deployed in the military/bootcamp, prison, but also
| some less extreme stuff like fraternities.
|
| On the other hand, for men, finding yourself a "band of
| brothers is "your job". If anything the cultural defect is not
| telling men that it's up to you to create your own band. There
| is a cottage industry of male support groups that is starting
| to address this that's getting really popular, if you want a
| rec, I'm doing one starting mid-next-month, I trust the pod
| leader, he's my housemate, and _really_ good at this. Contact
| info in my bio
| marktangotango wrote:
| > 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.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| 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"?
| xapata wrote:
| 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.
| Madmallard wrote:
| I don't really thinking feelings potentially throwing a wrench
| in a male female friendship is actually a problem. It's not
| like anything in life is permanent.
| xapata wrote:
| I have the same problem. Luckily, I do have male friends in the
| emotional support category, but they are all old friends from
| school and none live in the same city as me.
| snarf21 wrote:
| It is definitely hard to make friends as an adult male. Most of
| mine at this point are ex-coworkers. I think the one under
| appreciated place is in a hobby. I design and play board games.
| There are lots of meaningful ways to build relationships around
| that. Most other hobbies are the same, however you have to
| really get into the hobby, not go once a month. Running clubs,
| photography groups, cooking classes, hiking clubs.... just find
| something and dive in until you find the right thing for you.
|
| Also, When Harry Met Sally was right. Men and women can't be
| friends. _Eventually_ the sex gets in the way. Speaking for my
| self, men tend to confuse all closeness with romantic intimacy.
| I 've never seen even explicitly sex buddies work either,
| sooner or later someone gets jealous or serious.
| colmvp wrote:
| > Men and women can't be friends. Eventually the sex gets in
| the way.
|
| I have MANY female friends who have been in my life for
| decades and I have zero sexual attraction to them (and
| likewise they have zero sexual attraction to me). I have no
| idea why people perpetuate this stereotype that women and men
| cannot be friends. It's entirely possible to separate the
| people who you want to be friends with and the people you are
| sexually attracted to. Obviously, the women who I am sexually
| attracted to I don't attempt to be good friends with for fear
| of risking my long term relationship.
| pdpi wrote:
| I'm a straight man, one of my best friends is a straight
| woman, and we've known each other for 20 years. By best
| friend, I mean we talk almost daily, go to each other for
| advice and emotional support, and are comfortable discussing
| _very_ intimate details about our personal lives.
|
| The idea of a sexual relationship with her is just gross,
| though, in the "I'm screwing my sister" sort of way.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I think this depends. I'm a male but my two best friends are
| women who are in a relationship with each other. I think that
| it's true that most straight people of the opposite sex can't
| really be friends long term without one of them becoming
| infatuated with the other.
| johnny22 wrote:
| it doesn't actually HAVE to be that way though. You can have
| closeness without romantic interest if you realize that's
| what's happening. It's a learnable skill. Having a nice
| cuddle is good to recharge your batteries.
| bigiain wrote:
| And you can have romantic interest in someone, while at the
| same time knowing that's just not going to happen and
| behaving accordingly.
|
| I have at least half a dozen close woman friends, all of
| whom I have or have had "romantic thoughts" about, but for
| various reasons have either not tried, or tried and been
| rebuffed but stayed close friends with.
|
| One example, a girl I met in '99 (I still remember the day)
| and fell head over heels in lust with. She had a boyfriend,
| so that was out of the question. In the next 15 or so years
| we were never in a position where both of us were single at
| the same time. That situation happened about 5 years back,
| and we ended up in a drunken flirty conversation, where we
| both agreed that we weren't going to do this, because we
| both valued the friendship too highly to risk losing it
| over a hookup. (Neither of us have great track records of
| staying friends with exes...)
|
| Others had/got boyfriends/partners/spouses, and while all
| of them involved awkwardness and sometimes outright
| distrust, I totally understand and acknowledge that's a
| normal human reaction to a girl having very close guy
| friends they've known a lot longer than "new boyfriend".
| You need to earn trust in those situations, and all you
| have to do is behave like a rational and respectful human
| being. It can take a long time though, the girl from the
| example above got married, it took 3 or 4 years before her
| husband go ok enough with our friendship that we can go out
| together alone. And that's Ok, I reckon I'd have acted
| exactly the same were the positions reversed.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Poor bisexuals, no friends -- only prey.
| yojo wrote:
| I (straight male) have several close friends that are women,
| some going back two decades. I've been happily married for 12
| years, they've all been in stable relationships, and our
| partners get along.
|
| It is possible that _some_ men or women cannot be just
| friends with the opposite sex, but I have at least one
| counterfactual for the universal claim.
| base698 wrote:
| I always fall back on hobbies for friends. Certain times in
| my life I've gotten the idea I should make friends the normal
| way. This led to forced meetups and social gatherings I had
| no real interest in.
|
| Obviously that wouldn't work And it always led me back to
| things I had a general and natural interest. Which ultimately
| led to more natural relationships.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > Eventually the sex gets in the way.
|
| It can be done if you just text, never meet, rarely speak.
| bigiain wrote:
| It can be done if you respect them and yourself.
|
| It's pretty rare for me to not know if I'm gonna hook up
| with a woman in The first 6-12 months of knowing her. By
| then I've either raised the idea, or at least had the "if
| we were both single..." conversation and got a pretty good
| idea if they're open to the idea of considering it later if
| the situation allows.
|
| (Having said that, I'm in the older end of the demographic
| here, and I know for sure I didn't have this worked out
| when I was in my 20s and still had teenaged hormones
| rushing around my brain...)
| strickman wrote:
| I think it's more biological than cultural. Men evolved with
| preference for solving the production problem (are we creating
| enough?), and women evolved with preference for solving the
| distribution problem (does everyone have enough?). But as with
| everything, the behaviors are described by a normal
| distribution, and these two curves with offset means overlap.
| xapata wrote:
| What's the evidence for this evolution preference? I am
| skeptical, because historically, women were substantially
| involved in agriculture and textile production.
| strickman wrote:
| I think one piece of evidence would be the studies in
| psychology on the "big five" personality characteristics
| that show women scoring higher than men on agreeableness.
| But this is more of my guess on how things work.
|
| And it's probably not a massive offset in the bell curves;
| your examples would not be in conflict.
| xapata wrote:
| That's an observation of modern characteristics, not
| evolutionary pressures.
| strickman wrote:
| It wasn't my intention to limit my comments on this to
| statements for which I have links to supporting academic
| studies. I wanted to propose my guesses, because it's fun
| to see who else has arrived at the same spot. I was
| careful to start with "I think it's" rather than "it is
| true that" or "consensus exists that".
| rajin444 wrote:
| How can you say that for certain? We don't understand
| genetics well enough yet (much less anything downstream
| of that).
| darod wrote:
| it's actually very easy to make friends with other men but it
| will typically be done around an activity. my mentor used to
| categorize these activities as Tools, Toys, Tinkering and Ball
| Handling (Sports). If you want to make friends join a club,
| play a sport, etc.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| > 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 find it pretty weird to suggest you can't have an overtly
| platonic relationship with someone. I'm a straight male, tall,
| relatively attractive, and on the wealthier side of my social
| circles. I'm married.
|
| It's very easy to behave in such a way that it's clear I have
| no romantic interest in other women. I have never once felt
| that a woman failed to understand this and behave in kind.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Do you have a preference for female friendship for emotional
| support and intimacy like the poster does?
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I don't think that's particularly salient. It's not
| difficult to portray yourself as non romantically
| interested.
|
| I'm not buying that the poster behaves in a way consistent
| with just looking for friendship at all. Especially with
| the comment that partners get suspicious.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| I would struggle greatly to portray myself as non-
| romantically interested and still have the level of
| intimacy many women have with their close friends.
| They're real touchy and huggy. Resting heads on laps or
| shoulders.
|
| My current partner regularly has sleep overs with her
| best friend where they rug up on the couch and watch
| movies late at night. They share the bed when my partner
| hosts. And its not exactly something strange I haven't
| seen before.
|
| Physical touch is huge to me when it comes to feeling
| close to someone so when I think of women's more
| emotionally supportive and intimate relationships these
| are all the the things I think of. Maybe it's different
| for you. But I've seen lesbians express frustration at
| how it can be difficult to tell if someones interested
| because of it, with some relationship origin stories
| being that they were both having late night movie dates
| with their 'straight' friend, wishing the other was gay
| too.
| Madmallard wrote:
| Marriage specifically makes that easy I think.
| guilhas wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| sdze wrote:
| > Across three studies (N = 745) with U.S. participants
|
| This confirmed my assumption that Americans are very shallow
| people.
| polote wrote:
| What is the point of posting a link to HN that nobody can read ?
| makz wrote:
| That's exactly the fun of HN.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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...
|
| Edit: this only works if you're logged in to a Google account.
| momenti wrote:
| This does not work here (Europe).
| lolinder wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I am logged in.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| This isn't working in the US. I'm logged into Google.
| brap wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Are you a US-American?
| [deleted]
| openknot wrote:
| 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 e2 = 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 e2 = 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.
| xapata wrote:
| It's reasonable to worry about confounding factors, but one
| should hypothesize what they are as part of the criticism.
| openknot wrote:
| 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.
| aradox66 wrote:
| kccqzy wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| It will be interesting to see if this affects the famous
| "friend zone" https://quillette.com/2021/06/28/mate-selection-
| for-modernit...
| watwut wrote:
| Friends zone otherwise known as "she does not want to date
| me, but is polite to me, what a bi...
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Females prefer FEMALE friends with those traits.
| djxfade wrote:
| Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I'm a male, and my male
| friendships are closer to the female ones. Me and my best
| friend are very close.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I'm a man and I've had close female friends basically my
| whole life. I have close male friends too, tho.
| openknot wrote:
| >A lot more of the female friends I made earlier in my life
| remained as friends than male friends I made.
|
| Most of the people I bet I could rely on happen to be women
| (met in writing/graphic design groups at university), but I
| wonder if these will last as I get older and people get into
| relationships.
|
| It's less easy to hang out with a woman one-on-one without it
| seeming like a date (for a man who is heterosexual). It can
| also cause jealousy on either side to stay close after pairing
| up with a romantic partner.
|
| I suppose it depends on how one defines a "friend" based on
| closeness. It's likely I'll keep in touch and maintain a
| friendly relationship with these people as we all grow older
| (as acquaintance-friends), though I doubt I'll ever reach the
| level of "close friends," for any woman besides a romantic
| partner.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > The study shows that humans are susceptible to gender and
| cultural stereotypes.
|
| Susceptible? Where do you think stereotypes come from ?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Biases, heuristics, group dynamics, social reinforcement.
| kodah wrote:
| The conclusion comes off as a trope and I can't access the paper
| to see how this was concluded.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 e2 = 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 e2 = 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.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| > _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._
|
| Do you think this is the be all and end all of the topic?
| Some researchers had an idea to test and did a study and
| tried to get as random a sample of people as they could
| that might be representative of the population. Or even a
| sub group of people. They got some results and published.
| If the results are interesting enough, they will try and do
| a better study.
|
| The fact that your experience is different doesn't refute
| the study either. It's statistical. They aren't saying the
| 100% of all friendships are like X. I dare say it's also
| obvious that a sociological study has limitations and
| pointing them out isn't interesting.
| openknot wrote:
| From an academic perspective, it's no problem as the
| primary audience are other researchers where the
| limitations are a given.
|
| However, I posted the details from the study's design for
| the readers of Hacker News, who might assume that the
| study is generalizable to the broader U.S. population,
| especially since only the abstract is available for most
| users who see the link.
| lolinder wrote:
| You can access most ScienceDirect papers if you arrive via
| Google Scholar:
|
| 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.
| kodah wrote:
| Yeah, I saw your reply earlier and tried it. For some reason
| it's not working that way.
| lolinder wrote:
| Oops, just checked, it only works if you're logged in to
| Google. Editing my post now.
| sneakymichael wrote:
| This doesn't work for me FYI; I get the same paywalled
| page. Fresh browsing session, logged in to Google
| account.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _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...
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