The Art of Manliness - How Long Does It Take to Make Friends (And How Does That Process Work, Anyway)？

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast how long does

00:00:11.680 it take to make friends for someone you meet who's a potential friend to turn into an actual

00:00:15.880 friend if you're out of college and not a young adult anymore you know that it sure feels like

00:00:19.660 it's a process that takes an awfully long time well my guest has actually crunched the numbers

00:00:24.060 on this question has the numerical figures to answer it as well as a whole lot of insight into

00:00:28.140 the dynamics of friendship that are harder to quantify his name is jeffrey hall he's a professor

00:00:32.220 of communication studies who counts friendship among the topics of his research today on the show

00:00:36.220 jeff explains the three levels of friends that make up the sort of friendship hierarchy how many hours

00:00:40.060 it takes for someone to move from one level to the next and why it's hard to accumulate these needed

00:00:43.800 hours as an adult we also talk about how sheer time isn't the only factor that's needed transforming

00:00:47.800 acquaintance to a closer best friend and the other factors that need to be in play as well we then

00:00:51.940 shift in discussing another element that influences the friendship making process the expectations each

00:00:56.440 friend has for friendship we discuss how expectations for friendship differ according to sex and

00:01:00.560 personality and what happens when two people have differing expectations for what it means to be

00:01:05.220 friends after show's over check out our show notes at aom.is friendship time

00:01:09.820 jeffrey hall welcome to the show it's good to be here thank you so you are a professor of

00:01:24.720 communication studies who has spent a lot of your career researching and writing about friendship

00:01:29.960 how did you end up on that track yeah i actually kind of remember where i started long time ago when

00:01:35.400 i was an undergraduate student i realized that one of the things that was really motivating for me as i

00:01:40.500 was trying to understand big questions like a lot of undergraduate students do like what's the best

00:01:44.680 juicy for your time you know how do you really want to spend your time on this life and i remember

00:01:48.920 at that time having some really really excellent friends you know people who i wanted to spend time

00:01:54.320 doing road trips with or exploring los angeles with or you know just spending hours just talking

00:01:59.540 and i said to a friend of mine at that time something to the effect of you know i think that

00:02:04.520 the feeling of really having a wonderful conversation with somebody and spending time with them that way

00:02:08.340 is almost as good as sex and they looked at me like this look on their face like no way that's not

00:02:12.700 even possibly true but at that point in my life this feeling of what it meant to really connect with

00:02:17.980 people and feeling like people understood you became a motivator that's been with me my whole life

00:02:22.600 and so from there on you just decided i'm going to study friendship well that was actually a little

00:02:26.920 bit took a little more time to get there my very first project that i did in graduate school that

00:02:31.380 was about friendship was actually specifically on men's friendship i was in a fraternity and i was

00:02:36.080 actually fraternity president when i was an undergraduate student and one of the things that i experienced

00:02:41.380 there was that men had these really deep friendships they spent unbelievable amount of time together

00:02:47.220 doing all manner of different things and one of the things that was really odd though is that they were

00:02:51.960 also very concerned with what other men thought that they were gay they were very cautious about

00:02:56.500 that and they also used a lot of kind of you know slang at that time to kind of derogate you know

00:03:02.560 feminine behaviors and so my very first project i did on in graduate school about men's friendship

00:03:08.000 started looking at this idea of men using those kind of that kind of language to defend themselves

00:03:12.800 against intimacy so as they felt greater intimacy with other men they also use that to kind of as a

00:03:17.860 shield to say look at least you know i'm not attracted to you i just really really like you

00:03:22.020 as a person and that kind of tension for masculinity with men and how all that came about was really

00:03:27.460 kind of the origin point of my academic work on friendship gotcha all right so you've written some

00:03:32.040 papers recently where you've studied the amount of time and bandwidth investment it takes to make and

00:03:39.880 maintain friendships but before we get to that i think it'd be useful to break down the types of

00:03:44.940 friends that we all have and i think all of us intuitively understand that you know all not all

00:03:50.500 friends are equal you know some some friends are closer than others so how do sociologists break

00:03:56.140 down the hierarchy of friendship that's right so they actually look at kind of three different

00:04:00.760 categories of friendship that they have pretty well secured and say these are definitely ones that

00:04:05.600 we would call friendship one is that you might reserve for a best friend close friends or best friends

00:04:11.100 as categories that people use often interchangeably really kind of referring to people who you're very

00:04:15.800 close to emotionally and also find like your preference over all the people that you know

00:04:20.780 the second kind of category is ones that would be broadly just seen as friends right so these are

00:04:25.640 people who you would definitely call a friend if you were asked they may be old friends that were

00:04:30.120 once very close to you but aren't as close to you now and then the third category would be casual

00:04:34.760 friends and casual friends are kind of a curious category and one that i think that people kind of know

00:04:39.800 in the sense that they're not quite acquaintances right because you kind of know them and you would

00:04:43.780 say that they're a friend but they're not necessarily people who you would really kind of be as part of

00:04:48.260 your choice of who you might hang out with if you had a lot of time to spend with people so these would

00:04:54.120 be people who would be part of larger organizations you're at so teammates or workmates these would

00:04:58.540 also be people who long ago were closer to you but not as much anymore kind of ceremonial friends is what

00:05:03.320 they're called and they're all this kind of collection of people who you come out in different sort of places in

00:05:08.180 your life and are your friends but you wouldn't really spend time with them exclusively necessarily

00:05:13.060 yeah so like i think of a casual friend like the guy you see at the gym all the time

00:05:17.640 and you might exactly talk about stuff but you're not really friend i mean you're friends but you're

00:05:20.860 not that's right and i would say one thing to kind of differentiate the guy you talk to the gym

00:05:25.160 and all the other people at the gym is all the other people you wouldn't even call a friend and you

00:05:29.440 wouldn't even bother talking to them similar with people at work right there are people who are my work

00:05:34.280 friends and then there are people who i work with and they're not necessarily the same group of people

00:05:38.260 gotcha okay so in the depth of friendship you know whether it's a casual friend a friend

00:05:42.820 close friend it depends on the time you spend with that person we'll talk about that here in a bit

00:05:47.660 but sheer time isn't the only factor i mean if it was then like you said like all your co-workers

00:05:53.080 who you see pretty much you probably spend more time with your co-workers than your family

00:05:56.740 they would be friends but like you just said some of them are friends but most of them aren't

00:06:01.320 so like what is there a certain type of interaction that needs to happen between people so that you

00:06:08.360 know you move from acquaintance to casual friend and then casual friend to friend it's very interesting

00:06:13.100 is that people tend to judge others really fast before i did research on friendships kind of at the

00:06:19.480 same time i was doing research on what's called person perception and it's the ability that people have

00:06:23.520 to judge a person's personality or make estimations about characteristics about them with just a small

00:06:29.760 bit of information just a single conversation and recent research that i was really impressed by

00:06:35.620 argued that this kind of ability of person perception also guides our friendship choice

00:06:40.060 in a way that we almost immediately have a sense of whether or not this person has potential

00:06:44.680 so in the same way that when you're interested in someone romantically you have a pretty quick

00:06:49.280 estimation of whether or not you're interested in them pretty quickly with friends it's very similar

00:06:54.620 in the sense that we know how similar they are to us we know what kind of personality they have we

00:06:59.860 know whether they respond well to what we have to say and this is something that happens swiftly and

00:07:05.240 then something clicks the click that happens is not only the funny thing is the click is actually even

00:07:10.720 something people have used to describe the process academically but it's basically a process of two

00:07:15.500 people mutually recognizing liking right two people at the same time or roughly the same time realize i like

00:07:23.320 this person and the other person likes them in return and we see that verbally and non-verbally

00:07:28.040 in conversation we see that when people make jokes and we other people get our jokes we see that when

00:07:33.600 a person says something that's kind of sly or cynical or even you know something kind of quirky and you

00:07:39.200 totally get it you know where they're coming from and all of those little clues we suss up very swiftly

00:07:44.780 and then we say this person has friend potential so what's interesting is is that it seems that our ability

00:07:49.860 to judge whether or not we want to be friends with people happens fast but the process of developing

00:07:54.840 that relationship takes a lot more time okay and so okay you have that first recognition so let's say

00:08:00.180 you're talking to some guy at work and he throws out a joke that's kind of quirky and you got it you're

00:08:06.120 like wow this is potential friend here what sort of thing like how do you what do you have to do to

00:08:11.420 besides time what do you have to do to move that from acquaintance to casual friend

00:08:16.340 so a lot of people what they do is they change kind of their routines at work so if you were

00:08:21.500 somebody at work you might stop by their office more often you might you know see if they want

00:08:25.360 to have lunch together during work hours you see whether or not they're going to the same kind of

00:08:28.640 training or otherwise you sit by them during a meeting what's interesting is we do a lot of

00:08:32.720 behaviors that similar to what you might do like a middle school to show these are the kind of people

00:08:36.960 who I want to spend time with so that kind of workplace is the first kind of place in which the people

00:08:41.460 develop that friendship usually doesn't happen that people meet at work and then immediately say

00:08:47.440 hey do you want to come to my house or do you want to have a drink after work or do you want to join my

00:08:51.060 softball team that's that's a little unusual and part of it is is that we are not normatively

00:08:56.620 accustomed to the idea that friendships should be something that develop through a process of

00:09:01.920 invitation although I would argue that that invitation act is critical in moving a friendship forward

00:09:07.400 another project I did at the University of Kansas with a graduate student focused on this idea of

00:09:12.200 turning points and we need this moment in our friendship to signal that you're open to having

00:09:17.220 kind of a deeper relationship with another person so although immediately after clicking with somebody

00:09:22.180 you start kind of redirecting your behavior to spend more time with them at work at some point

00:09:27.060 if you want that friendship to develop into something more significant you have to actually take some

00:09:32.000 risks and those risks require spending time outside of work right so inviting them to go get

00:09:37.260 drinks go to go to a ball game or something like that whatever yeah exactly so I've made friends

00:09:42.640 through people who were part of a softball team when I first got to the University of Kansas

00:09:45.700 I've made friends with people who you know we had a similar interest in things that were going on

00:09:49.760 around town or wanted to go to a basketball game together and so there are a lot of possibilities

00:09:53.960 of what you might invite people to but there are a lot there's a lot of social awkwardness

00:09:58.440 that comes along with that invitation as well which is I think why people are so reticent to try

00:10:02.700 well let's say you've you've made that move there's that turning point you've you've turned

00:10:07.100 an acquaintance to a casual friend you spend time and you get closer like what has to happen what

00:10:12.620 sort of interaction has to happen to move from say friend to best friend or good friend yeah so

00:10:18.660 what's interesting here is my study that I did on friendship hours basically took three processes

00:10:23.260 into account one of them is just time and time alone so this study got really popular because that

00:10:28.820 it provides some sort of estimates that people can think about in terms of what it requires to get

00:10:32.680 there and I think that those estimates are important because what they seem to suggest is if you have

00:10:37.240 less than that amount of time then you probably haven't spent enough time with that person to call them

00:10:41.620 this type of relationship so it's kind of more of the idea of this is kind of the range of where

00:10:46.260 things start to change the second thing we looked at is how do you spend your time together

00:10:50.340 and what my study found was the more time you spend hanging out with somebody the greater chance

00:10:55.260 that's going to develop into a more intimate friendship but the more time you spend just at

00:10:59.340 work or school it decreases the likelihood of that developing into a more intimate friendship

00:11:03.480 and the third is how you talk to someone so there's a long long history of doing research

00:11:08.500 on relationship development focused on something that's called self-disclosure and self-disclosure is

00:11:13.800 kind of a huge body of literature that says that if I talk about myself or reveal more intimate

00:11:19.040 details of myself that this develops liking well I broaden that description quite a bit in my study

00:11:25.060 to say that it doesn't require self-disclosure necessarily but it does require doing things

00:11:30.060 like joking around having catch-up conversations being like so what have you been up to or how did

00:11:34.680 that thing go that you went to or you know what's been going on in your life and then also meaningful

00:11:39.060 talk and meaningful talk doesn't have to necessarily be like your personal trials and tribulations although

00:11:44.400 it could meaningful talk could also be talking about things that you really care about you know

00:11:48.460 things that you're concerned about in politics or things that you're concerned about at work that really

00:11:52.140 matter to you personally and having the other person listen so the idea that I'm working with

00:11:57.120 is that there's kind of like three separate factors that are all going on in that relationship

00:12:01.440 development in order to develop a really a best or a very close friend you kind of have to have all

00:12:06.020 three okay so let's do a quick recap here so the time you spend together counts but it can't just be

00:12:11.820 time you see someone at school or work because I mean you see people every day at school and work and

00:12:16.740 you don't become friends with those people it also matters how you spend your time together and how

00:12:22.300 you talk with someone and there are three types of interactions that increase your intimacy and can

00:12:27.480 increase your chances of becoming friends with someone the first one is self-disclosure then there's

00:12:32.240 having meaningful conversations and then there's just catching up on the everyday stuff as well like

00:12:37.000 what's going on with work kids etc and if you want to move from friend to best friend or close friend

00:12:42.740 you want to have all three of those conversations okay so even though time isn't the only factor

00:12:49.120 I want to focus that on that a little bit because you've done some research as to how long it takes

00:12:54.320 to move up the friendship hierarchy so let's talk about that for a bit let's say you you meet some guy

00:13:00.340 you hit it off you have a lot in common you get along great how long is it going to take to move

00:13:06.100 from acquaintance to a casual friend yeah so according to my study that range happens somewhere between

00:13:11.940 40 and 60 hours of time together so the study that I did actually had two parts to it one was focused

00:13:17.320 on adults that had geographically relocated and they typically relocated for work or for family

00:13:22.280 and then the other one was on college freshmen and I caught them three weeks right after they had

00:13:26.800 arrived at the University of Kansas and looked at who they had been spending time with in those three

00:13:31.160 weeks before the start of the semester and in combination the kind of that first estimate of

00:13:37.320 casual friend from acquaintance came from the idea that probably for adults it took according to my

00:13:43.680 study it took longer for adults to develop friends but what's tricky about that is because it was a

00:13:48.220 retroactive study it could be that they had already developed a casual friendship and were just spending

00:13:53.000 more and more time afterwards because the one done on students was done prospectively meaning we

00:13:58.000 caught them so early on we were actually able to see changes of different time windows so that estimate

00:14:03.840 is really the 40 to 60 hours is meant to accommodate the idea that it depends kind of on whether or not

00:14:10.780 more and more hours are accumulating with this person and you can imagine how that would do that in a

00:14:15.100 school setting or in a work setting the next kind of level of change happens between 80 and 100 hours

00:14:20.940 of time and between 80 and 100 hours of time you kind of go from the casual friend to the friend

00:14:25.720 category and this happens really sort of in a development of greater amount of time spending time away from the

00:14:31.320 place that you met spending time hanging out spending time playing you know whether you play video games

00:14:36.280 or watching tv or going to events together so it kind of diversifies the kind of ways in which you're

00:14:41.240 experiencing the other person and the third level is over 200 hours it takes to make a close or a best

00:14:46.700 friend and i actually think that might be a conservative estimate meaning i think it might actually take

00:14:50.900 longer than that and part of the reason that it takes so long to develop that level of intimacy with

00:14:55.560 another person is you have to get to the point where your guard is dropped you have to get to the point where

00:15:00.020 you're feeling comfortable being yourself around this other person and i think for a lot of people

00:15:04.260 they don't get to that level of of comfort with another person to allow for a best friendship to

00:15:09.280 develop okay so it takes about 200 hours or more to make a closer best friend so to clarify do these

00:15:16.160 hours include both time spent at school or work and outside of it or is that just time spent together

00:15:22.400 outside of school or work no both so that estimate came from time spent in both places okay and the

00:15:30.300 there's is there a certain time frame that you need to accumulate these hours within so i mean like in

00:15:35.200 high school or college i mean you're seeing your friends every day all day and then you might be

00:15:39.940 spending every weekend together so you might accumulate those 200 hours within a matter of months

00:15:44.720 i mean that's why when you're young it feels like you can meet someone one day and then like in a few

00:15:49.140 months later you guys are best friends but when you're an adult and you got a job and you got a

00:15:53.440 family you might see a friend just like a few hours every month so it could take possibly several years

00:16:00.100 to accumulate 200 hours so do you need to accumulate all those hours within a certain window of time or

00:16:05.360 can it be spread out over several years yeah i think they absolutely can and one thing you're pointing

00:16:11.140 out that i think is very important is that when you have the luxury of time and you're open to

00:16:15.320 developing relationships such as when you're in school or a young adult studies actually suggest

00:16:19.860 that people build really strong friendships usually within the next you know about three or four months

00:16:24.780 and the reason that it's such a short interval of time is people kind of make a choice because they

00:16:29.800 have so much luxury of time and different people to make friends with that by the time that four

00:16:33.960 months elapse you're kind of where you're going to be with that person i think that you're right that

00:16:38.320 for adults there is some evidence to think that this is not only a more gradual process

00:16:42.040 but remember when we're talking about 200 hours we're talking about someone who becomes your best

00:16:45.820 friend and i think that that standard is actually quite high to develop a brand new best friend is

00:16:51.420 quite a hefty endeavor it's not something that you can do simply or it's not something you can do

00:16:56.420 through the process of just really liking someone or spending a little bit of time together

00:17:00.240 so i think that you're correct that as an adult to develop a best friend probably takes many many more

00:17:06.120 months and maybe even years in the process of slowly slowly gradually accumulating kind of that level of

00:17:11.480 closeness and intimacy which can be done in a lot of different ways as you kind of progress through

00:17:15.840 that process okay so like the lesson there is that adults need to be patient when with making friends

00:17:21.060 i mean if you're expecting to make like a new best friend or a good friend in a matter of months

00:17:24.860 like you did in high school or college you're probably going to be disappointed absolutely i actually

00:17:29.420 would find it hard to believe that there'd be a context in which that you would be able to do so

00:17:32.840 as an adult unless you found someone who is just an exact same stage where you're at where you're

00:17:37.420 really open to meeting someone new yeah that's another interesting hard thing about adult

00:17:41.000 friendships is that you're in different stages with different people so like you know you might

00:17:44.480 be newly married no kids you have a lot of time and then you meet some guy who's married and has

00:17:50.660 three kids and is you know coaching football or whatever you guys probably you might have a lot

00:17:55.860 in common but it might not turn into friendship because you're you're out of sync that's exactly

00:17:59.980 right being ready to actually invest time in friendship is i think that's something that people imagine

00:18:05.000 that's only on them and sometimes they find it really frustrating because they can't

00:18:08.660 make the other person be available in the way they might like but it's probably more common

00:18:12.640 than not that two people are on different pages and that's why i think also circumstantially when

00:18:17.360 you are a young adult it's so much easier is that many many people are open to the process of

00:18:22.100 developing friendships and having a longer time to spend together with their friends okay so one of

00:18:28.000 the obstacles to making friends as an adult is that not everyone's at the same stage in life or

00:18:33.120 some people just aren't open to friendship at the same time besides that are there any other

00:18:37.680 obstacles to making friends as an adult and accumulating those hours and hours it requires

00:18:42.240 to make a friend there are i think three kind of key parts to this one is that we really value work

00:18:48.220 in the united states we work more than any industrialized country in the world we work longer

00:18:54.080 hours and what's weird is is that in other countries as people get you know more education or they have

00:18:58.460 more access to resources they actually work less but the united states if you make more money you

00:19:03.300 just keep working harder and a lot of that is due to kind of a broader kind of cultural value that we

00:19:09.040 put on that the second i think factor which i think is really difficult is geographic kind of mobility

00:19:13.860 we move from place to place to place so we actually lose out on all of that basis of friendship that

00:19:19.640 we've built with another person we pick up and go to another place now you don't lose all of your

00:19:23.700 friends when you move but study after study has confirmed that moving is a huge threat to being

00:19:28.300 able to maintain friendship over time and i think the third probably has less to do with just united

00:19:33.200 states but if you ask both men and women people throughout the world having kids and getting

00:19:38.240 married are huge killers to friendship and both of them is because that they're a huge amount of

00:19:42.720 emotional time and also physical time with people basically all of that time is being invested in your

00:19:49.280 most important relationships and so you don't make time with friends what's interesting is in the

00:19:54.240 past there's good reason to believe that due partly to gender segregation where men and women had

00:19:59.140 different activities due in part to also kind of a more open culture in the sense that people were

00:20:04.580 more likely to do things like join bowling leagues and be part of the elks club and you know all that

00:20:10.160 kind of thing they spent a lot more time out of their house with people who were not their family and so

00:20:14.580 there was more of an understanding that if you left your home during the week to go do things

00:20:19.300 it wasn't an insult to the people in your home it was just kind of how you were in the society that

00:20:23.660 you lived in but i find that in our culture those forces of work the forces of geographic mobility

00:20:29.520 and the forces that have really said people and men particularly should be spending more time with

00:20:35.160 their kids and with their loved ones at home means that that time that they would spend outside of

00:20:39.480 their home developing friendships has really been very much curtailed and in some ways minimized as

00:20:45.060 a value so it sounds like if you want to make make friends you have to make it a priority like you have

00:20:49.400 to put it on your schedule or it's not going to happen bingo yeah yeah i feel strongly about that

00:20:55.060 you know i'll just tell you know anyone out there who's interested i actually have it on my list of

00:20:59.260 things to do sometimes and i'm not even kidding like if i want to keep in touch with my friends i put it

00:21:03.960 on my you know make us an appointment i have a standing conversation with my best man for my

00:21:08.900 wedding who lives in los angeles and i live in kansas and we talk once a month and we don't

00:21:13.560 sometimes we only get to talk for 15 minutes sometimes we talk for longer but we make it a

00:21:17.480 priority and so it's odd is that even someone like myself who you'd think you know i've cared

00:21:22.580 about friendship a long time i study it it would just come naturally you really have to make it a

00:21:27.060 priority in life otherwise it won't happen no i think that's a good point i think a lot of people

00:21:30.420 don't do that because they think well it's friendship you're not supposed to make it like this sort of

00:21:34.580 it's not a to-do but you you kind of have to make it that way or it's not going to happen

00:21:39.520 i think so and you know what's funny about things about the to-do concept is that a lot of people

00:21:45.400 actually think that the process of having to organize something makes it less pleasurable

00:21:49.320 but in a lot of research suggests also that when you have something to look forward to it's actually

00:21:53.520 really nice like being able to anticipate the lunch that you're going to have with a friend or

00:21:57.420 being able to anticipate hanging out with the guys or anticipate that phone call with a long a friend

00:22:02.300 from long ago also has its own rewards and so people have this kind of interesting characteristic

00:22:07.840 where they call it negative forecasting bias where they imagine something is in the future

00:22:12.400 they don't want to put on their calendar because like oh god making friendship into a chore that's

00:22:16.760 like the worst thing ever but oddly by rendering it into something to look forward to and that's

00:22:21.700 something that you can actually plan for it actually makes the experience of having it that much more

00:22:26.200 fun we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:22:29.180 and now back to the show

00:22:33.320 all right so we've talked about you know how much time you have to spend with someone so they become

00:22:37.380 a friend do we have any research on how long it takes for a friend to descend down the hierarchy

00:22:41.720 of friendship all right so for example if you don't invest regularly in your best friendship

00:22:45.380 how long does it take for that best friend to become you know casual friend and just sort of

00:22:49.840 an acquaintance what's very funny about that is that there are kind of two thoughts schools of thought

00:22:54.840 about this there is pretty consistent information and evidence that says that people in the casual

00:22:59.520 friend realm are turning in and out of that all of the time you know different stages of your life

00:23:05.740 from middle school to high school to college to young adulthood to the time with your family

00:23:10.920 places in your you know you change to go to different places in the country of the world to live

00:23:15.640 that these people who are your casual friends there will go away and some of them will maintain

00:23:20.960 through things like you know social media or facebook or otherwise but many of them are just

00:23:25.560 people who will disappear and interestingly there's good evidence to say that those people's the loss of

00:23:30.000 those people isn't necessarily a bad thing you know people don't feel particularly sad about having lost

00:23:34.420 their casual friends but the what i would say is that having that kind of group of casual friends

00:23:39.840 to reconnect with is a useful thing to have if you move back to the place where you met them

00:23:44.200 so if i move back to los angeles for example i would have a whole set of casual friends i've kept in touch

00:23:48.700 with a little bit that i might reenact a friendship with if i live there however when it comes to best

00:23:54.100 friendship that's where the school of thought kind of differs what's interesting is is there are these

00:23:58.400 several studies one that was done in the in the early 90s that i really like it was called just

00:24:02.900 friends and this researcher sociologist interviewed men and women about their best friendships and then

00:24:09.580 they would interview the best friend about their friendship as well and what they found was that

00:24:13.480 there were people who basically said this person is my best friend the researcher research to the best

00:24:18.020 friend the best friend would be like i'm their best friend i had no idea that's fantastic like i

00:24:23.040 haven't seen them in years so you can keep this best friend in your life in your emotional kind of

00:24:29.200 sense of who i am and even in a relational sense even if you don't communicate with them very often

00:24:35.040 and i think what's interesting about that to me is that we do have the value of feeling like we're

00:24:40.880 connected with someone but if we don't enact that then we don't all get the benefits of it

00:24:46.420 so what i'm getting at is that there seems to be two different processes going on and my own

00:24:51.280 research looks a lot at this one is the relational process are there people in my life and the second

00:24:56.160 is the communication process which is how often do i talk to them and both contribute to your

00:25:00.900 well-being so if you want to have the best possible best friendship experiment experience you

00:25:06.040 actually have to do both the communication part and the having part and so yeah this means you could

00:25:11.080 still maintain a best friendship even if that person moves you just had like like you you make it a

00:25:15.080 priority to talk to your best man at your wedding at least once a week once a month yeah craig and i

00:25:20.200 talk once a month and i love it like it's it's i look forward to that conversation we just dive right

00:25:25.420 in and even if we only got 20 minutes he'll be like okay i got 20 minutes i'm like okay let's work

00:25:29.380 let's take it and you got to make it a priority absolutely and i think it's interesting too if you

00:25:34.340 ask a lot of people like oh who's your best friend they'll often mention like someone from high

00:25:38.300 school or from college even though they haven't seen them in you know decades and i've noticed that like

00:25:43.700 who's your best friend like i'll include in that list my best friend from high school and we haven't

00:25:48.420 talked in a while but if we got together i feel like we would pick up right where we left off yeah

00:25:53.820 that's a definitional characteristic of a best friend right the thing that makes best friends

00:25:58.120 or close friends close friends is that they are people who we can stop having the relationship with

00:26:03.160 and then when we see them again we still get to have that sense of closeness and that sense of

00:26:07.640 camaraderie i too had an experience like that or a close friend of mine from college

00:26:11.940 i saw in new york a couple of years ago because i was going out there for work and we just spent you

00:26:17.000 know a long afternoon evening together and had just a fantastic time of catching back up again

00:26:21.680 but neither one of us do a very good job of keeping in touch in the meantime so i think what's lovely

00:26:27.440 about these things is that the kind of concern or the worry well if i reconnect with my old friends

00:26:31.800 or otherwise they you know it may not be as much fun typically speaking you know if you're as close

00:26:37.040 to that person as you were then chances are it will be a very good experience

00:26:40.840 another component that influences making and maintaining friendships that you've researched

00:26:46.580 are the expectation each person the friendship has for the friendship so what are the factors that

00:26:53.000 you found that shape a person's expectations for friendship yeah when i did that expectations

00:26:57.540 project and that was where my interest began to go away from just looking at men's friendships

00:27:01.820 and look at kind of differences between men and women's friendships people have a set of

00:27:05.920 expectations for what it means to be a friend like what does it require minimally for someone to become

00:27:11.020 a friend or to be a friend and those projects really focused on the ideas how does our you know our

00:27:16.220 concept of what friendship is differ between men and women and otherwise one of the things that about

00:27:22.720 that friendship expectations project that i looked at and i find really fascinating still is that i argued

00:27:28.140 something that i call cultivated complexity which is essentially the idea that you cultivate a level of

00:27:33.280 expectations and complexity of those expectations with another person so that for some friends you can

00:27:38.580 have very simple expectations of what it means for you and them to be together as friends for other

00:27:43.840 people the friendship list of things you expect from them may be very very big what's fascinating is that

00:27:49.500 if you expect too much of your friends you're often disappointed but if you expect nothing from your

00:27:54.840 friends a lot of times they don't even meet that minimum standard so there's this kind of this

00:27:58.560 middle ground which seems to be the people who are functioning the best in friendship is they're able

00:28:03.340 to expect enough from their friends to be able to get kind of those relationship factors out but

00:28:08.340 they're not expecting so much to be you know disappointed when their friends aren't there for them

00:28:12.200 every single time and in every single circumstance and not so like expecting nothing is that basically that

00:28:19.860 relationship goes nowhere so those kind of expectations really play a role in being able to kind of

00:28:24.700 set the stage for what you want that friendship to look like and so what are some things when we're

00:28:29.060 looking at okay what kind of expectations we have for the friendship like what are we looking for is

00:28:32.860 it just a matter of like how much you're going to invest interest like what what is what are the

00:28:36.560 factors we look at yeah so the main factor the one that's actually the most important in in many ways

00:28:41.900 is the one that what is kind of a trust a sense that that person is going to be there for you when you

00:28:47.400 need them a sense in which that they value you as a person the idea that their concern for you is genuine

00:28:54.000 so these kind of four issues that you can trust them that they'll be for you that they truly like you for

00:28:59.720 who you are and that you can count on them or they genuinely believe the things that they are right

00:29:04.900 they're not fake or they're not just kind of fair weather friends that's kind of the core expectation

00:29:09.400 of friendship and the most important one then other ones we've kind of talked about already one is things

00:29:14.180 like having somebody who's similar to you as a set of friendship expectations similar values similar hobbies

00:29:19.140 one of them is things around self-disclosure so self-disclosure expectations one of them is about

00:29:24.140 having fun with another person spending time together the expectation that they're going to include you

00:29:28.480 in things and invite you to do things and then there's a kind of a final set of expectations which

00:29:33.100 are pretty small the big picture but also things like i you know it's nice to have friends who know

00:29:38.800 people are nice to have friends who are well connected in business or it's nice to have friends who are

00:29:42.640 athletic or it's nice to have friends who are are you know kind of socially popular or otherwise

00:29:47.300 and so these are also things we like to have on our friends but are kind of ancillary to friendship

00:29:52.540 but my project on expectations was saying these are the kind of six sets of expectations we can have

00:29:58.120 for our friends so it sounds like you can have different levels of friendships and listening to you

00:30:03.880 it sounds like it tracks really nicely with aristotle's idea of having three different levels of friendship

00:30:08.860 the first level of friendship it's instrumental or utilitarian friendship and this is where

00:30:12.720 it's a friendship where you just get some kind of use out of the guy like maybe they can help you

00:30:16.920 with your network help you with your business maybe the second level of friendship is a friendship of

00:30:22.080 enjoyment so this is where you know you you just have a good time with this guy but you wouldn't

00:30:26.720 expect him to visit you in the hospital if you were there and then the third level of friendship

00:30:31.080 is a friendship of virtue and this is where you help each other become better people and where you're

00:30:37.220 just friends for the sake of friendship and so as a consequence you'd expect more from this

00:30:41.620 type of friendship you got it so how do we develop these these expectations we have towards friendships

00:30:47.540 so this actually something that starts very early the research on child development says that kind of

00:30:53.020 the process of being able to develop an understanding of what other people can do for us and who they

00:30:57.120 are to us is something that kind of maps on to a developmental process in children that starts

00:31:01.960 kind of early on and this is like in our kindergarten age where kids begin to prefer certain playmates

00:31:07.180 people that they like to spend time with over others and a lot of time it's because they can

00:31:11.700 jointly play together they can actually do things at the same time and they share nice with each other

00:31:16.740 so they begin to look at their friends as somebody who is sharing their blocks or their cars or whatever

00:31:21.160 rather than somebody who's being selfish those developed expectations get to a little bit farther when

00:31:26.460 their play gets more complicated and kind of get even more complex when the social issues become more

00:31:31.840 complicated so think like middle school where it becomes super important that you have a friend who's

00:31:36.600 genuine super important you have a friend that you can trust to kind of defend your character

00:31:40.940 if another person is being harsh on you a lot of this comes from the idea that adolescents actually

00:31:46.260 go through a period of time where they're really sensitive to both inclusion signals like do people

00:31:50.940 like me and want me to be here but are also very you know very concerned with exclusion signals so

00:31:56.260 the feeling that if anyone slights them or looks down on them they get really aroused and upset by that

00:32:01.820 kind of thing so as a consequence your friendship expectations come from that developmental

00:32:06.120 process what i think is really interesting is that the developmental process maps onto the three

00:32:11.020 level of friendship we talked about earlier so as you said right at that lowest level of oh i like

00:32:15.800 this guy he's a good guy shares nice he shares his toys right that's a casual friend or an aristotelian

00:32:22.420 model of a you know instrumental friend or utilitarian one and then as you move up from friend to close

00:32:28.660 friend or best friend at the very top of our best friend that's also the most emotionally developed

00:32:33.820 relationship and friendship the one that we would only be able to have when we developed a more

00:32:37.940 secure sense of self and other and that only happens after you know 15 16 17 years old so what

00:32:44.060 i find really fascinating is this is this process that your emotional development as a person maps onto

00:32:49.280 your strength of relationship in these three different categories of friendship how do friendship

00:32:54.040 expectations differ by gender do men and women generally have different expectations for their friends

00:32:59.120 men and women do have different expectations based on gender in the case of women as you might

00:33:04.920 suppose and guess that women tend to have a higher expectation of kind of emotional intimacy 0.96

00:33:09.860 self-disclosure kind of talk that's really based upon a high level of sort of emotional talk and also

00:33:16.040 sharing men and women both share two similar expectations for different categories they both want their

00:33:22.660 friends to be someone who they can hang out with and share a laugh and enjoy themselves the other

00:33:27.460 quality that men and women are quite similar on is this idea of kind of genuineness like this person

00:33:33.500 really likes me for who i am and men and women are quite similar on their expectations that their

00:33:38.680 friends should be trustworthy and genuine in that regard although women do tend to have slightly higher 0.99

00:33:43.500 expectations for that than do men but the last category where men actually have higher expectations

00:33:48.560 than do women is this category that's kind of curious it can has all of the different characteristics of 1.00

00:33:54.140 what we might want in a friend that's not about the relationship so for example this category included

00:33:59.460 friends who were intelligent and athletic and successful and had good business connections and

00:34:04.160 were attractive and were people who had you know access to high paying jobs and the idea was is that

00:34:09.820 men more so than women and even young boys and young men all evaluated friends who had those

00:34:15.860 characteristics as being more valuable friends than did women that so status is an important part and 0.84

00:34:22.560 exactly and you can kind of see how that changes right and so for boys for example status might be

00:34:27.740 somebody who's popular and athletic as a young adult it might be somebody who has access to jobs or

00:34:32.480 has comes from a family with you know income as your young adult you also might find someone who's

00:34:36.900 well connected so the idea of these status indicators actually are motivations for men to maintain

00:34:42.640 same-sex friendships in a way that they're not for women does personality play a role in our expectations

00:34:47.600 absolutely so probably the one that makes the biggest difference of all personality characteristics

00:34:52.700 has to do with this issue of attachment right so people who have very secure attachment have an

00:34:58.100 easier time being able to evaluate others as being a safe place to develop closeness with

00:35:02.780 they get less anxious if there are these signals of exclusion or otherwise however there are other

00:35:07.620 the one that people talk about the most and i get this question the most often is well what about

00:35:11.460 introversion and extroversion and what i find fascinating is that there is good reason to think that

00:35:16.400 introverts and extroverts are different on two key phenomena one is extroverts are comfortable talking

00:35:21.140 to a whole heck of a lot more people and count a lot more people as friends than introverts do but

00:35:26.460 the other one is is that introverts also tend to find friends and really dedicate themselves so they

00:35:32.340 have fewer friends but really work on developing friends but introversion and extroversion both value

00:35:37.680 friends in a very similar way they just define what it means to be a friend a little bit differently

00:35:42.160 so if you have like an extrovert and introvert being friends like the extrovert might have like

00:35:47.200 you know hey you know my expectation for you is that you know you're just around whenever if you

00:35:51.880 can't make it no big deal the introvert be like hey where were you you were supposed to be here

00:35:56.200 yeah those kind of miscommunications could come up one thing that i'm actually kind of thinking in my

00:36:01.240 own experience too is that i'm probably a little more extroverted in terms of comfortable certainly

00:36:05.540 talking to different people and making different types of relationships and one of my friends that

00:36:10.280 from college that is much more introverted one of the things about having a relationship with her is

00:36:14.920 that she's really like these are my people so what's neat is is that when we're you know able

00:36:20.180 to hang out which doesn't happen nearly as often as it did when we were in college we were actually

00:36:24.020 going to more depth of conversation and all the things that a more introverted friendship looks

00:36:28.620 like so i was able to enact those in my relationship with her and i went in a way i wasn't really

00:36:33.880 necessarily able to do with a lot of my more casual friendships so i think it's important to keep in

00:36:38.540 mind here is that yeah there can be conflict between different kind of personality styles or

00:36:43.420 attachment styles when it comes to to friendship but part of the beauty of friendship is you can

00:36:47.660 have friends for different reasons right you can have a friend that you talk to about really

00:36:51.100 important stuff but you can also have friends that you're always having a great time because

00:36:54.280 everyone's laughing about everything you can have a friend who's fantastic for being on a

00:36:58.440 you know softball team together or someone that you like to go out and have a drink and

00:37:01.400 shoot pool with but can have another friend who is somebody who would be more likely to invite

00:37:06.380 to like a social gathering or someone who you might like to work with so what's neat about

00:37:11.500 friendships is that because they're not exclusive we can find different parts of ourselves being

00:37:16.140 developed through these relationships we cultivate with others but what happens when there's two friends

00:37:21.920 their expectations of the friendship differ what typically happens yeah what's most likely to happen is

00:37:29.280 friends very rarely actually have conflict that leads them to go down different paths and you might

00:37:36.040 be able to guess what are the types of conflict that really break friends up and this is things like

00:37:41.160 you cheated on me with you know my my partner you really let me down right i expected you to be

00:37:47.300 there and you totally blew it or you were just downright mean right what's weird is is that

00:37:52.720 friendships can even recover if people like you know fight or scream at each other or come to blows even

00:37:57.820 and some research actually suggests that you know that can actually even be bonding because you care

00:38:02.520 enough about that other person to argue with them so what's weird is is when people have different

00:38:07.500 expectations they're much more likely to just sort of back off they spend less time with the person

00:38:12.880 they don't say anything you know they ignore their texts they don't respond they prioritize other people

00:38:18.660 and all of these ways of disentangling oneself from that friendship usually happens as a matter of course

00:38:24.900 rather than a matter of intent so people aren't going i need to break up with this person instead

00:38:29.660 they're like meh i'm just not feeling it or you know what they're always expecting me to do this

00:38:33.980 and i don't really want to or they're just not meeting the other person's expectations for the

00:38:38.420 frequency of communication or type of communication so the other person stops inviting them and i think

00:38:43.260 that that's one of the things about that kind of tension that plays out is we are generally speaking

00:38:49.180 not going to talk to our friends about the process of relationship disengagement in the way that we would

00:38:54.180 in a romantic partnership where there's a clear expectation that if things are falling apart

00:38:58.320 you try to talk it through so when friends have different expectations for a friendship

00:39:03.060 they typically don't discuss it and then they just disengage and the friendship dissolves

00:39:07.240 but even if it's not common to talk about the relationship the friendship is it possible to have a

00:39:12.380 successful or fruitful discussion about different expectations for the friendship yeah that is a very

00:39:17.720 very hard thing to do you know i think that friends are actually poorly equipped to figure out even how to

00:39:22.840 broach the topic usually what happens is if there is some sort of disconnect the disconnect

00:39:27.480 happens more because of a sense of reciprocity right i'm providing a lot more to you than you're providing

00:39:33.420 to me i'm having to be the one who reaches out more and i'm having to be the one who carries the work

00:39:38.480 and scheduling time together and i think those kind of things on a more sort of fundamental level

00:39:42.720 can be managed quite well right in the sense that you can actually kind of say you know when person

00:39:49.180 if you're the person on the receiving end of those invitations but not are not great at initiating you know

00:39:53.460 be thankful and grateful for what the person offers and make sure the other person knows you know i

00:39:57.140 really appreciate you keeping in touch even though i'm not great at it or even be self-deprecating

00:40:00.960 about it you know i'm terrible at this but you're so great and i really appreciate it so i think there

00:40:05.240 are ways to kind of smooth those edges over but research on kind of fundamental disagreements of

00:40:10.660 expectations you know around trust violations of trust or violations of intimacy or violations of

00:40:16.300 sense that the other person just isn't there for you those are very hard to repair and generally

00:40:21.220 speaking we do not have a good kind of cultural dialogue or any kind of sense of how to approach

00:40:25.640 when someone actually does something that's pretty off all right so people are going to have a hard

00:40:30.120 time discussing you know deeper expectations in in friendships or for friendships but it is possible

00:40:36.580 to communicate about you know the more you know concrete ways there may be some miss signals going

00:40:42.320 on like you know for example i know my experience is that most people are either initiators

00:40:47.400 inviters by nature and some people aren't and i think it's just a personality thing so the people

00:40:52.480 who are natural initiators they often just need some reassurance from their friend you know saying

00:40:57.040 hey you know what just because i don't reach out as much uh doesn't mean i don't like you i'm just not

00:41:02.780 very good at it's not my inclination i think that we can misinterpret a lack of equity and friendship

00:41:08.660 as a lack of desire to be in the relationship and i have had that happen personally so many times

00:41:14.500 where you know just recently i'm back in touch with a friend of mine from undergraduate at least

00:41:20.400 back in more routine touch with a friend of mine and i had thought all the times that he didn't like

00:41:25.260 return my text or otherwise was just that you know he had other priorities and now that we're kind of

00:41:30.160 back in touch again he says yeah i really appreciate all that time that you spent trying to get me to

00:41:35.840 respond i just did not have my together i did not have my life organized in a way where i could

00:41:40.720 respond and i'm sorry i wasn't a good friend but i'm really glad we're back in touch now and that

00:41:45.220 is so deeply reassuring to me because i did have some anxieties like why why isn't he returning my

00:41:50.680 stuff like i don't get it yeah like some people just are bad texters like they just don't they don't

00:41:55.280 do that but they probably appreciate it i think so yeah so what do you think the the big takeaways

00:42:01.580 about friendship and adulthood that you think people should take away from or that they can get from

00:42:06.240 your research absolutely i would say the number one is do not be a flake do not be a flake if people

00:42:12.660 invite you to do stuff show up you know if you say hey we should hang out together hang out like

00:42:17.780 follow through is key and follow through doesn't have to mean like tomorrow it doesn't have to even

00:42:22.640 mean next week it means that you make it something that you if someone makes a promise or invitation to

00:42:28.500 you to do things you help make it happen and one of the things that i think that in our contemporary

00:42:33.180 culture you hear a lot is that men will or and women for that matter will say you know they met

00:42:39.040 somebody really interesting they'd like to be friends like hey we should hang out and do that

00:42:42.060 thing together sometime and then nothing nothing happens that is to me the biggest key indicator of

00:42:48.380 something that has potential if another person says i want to spend time with you take them up on

00:42:54.040 it and spend time with them the second big takeaway that i would say is something we've already talked

00:42:58.340 about is be intentional be intentional about you know spending time with your friends keeping in

00:43:03.040 touch with your friends and then the third thing that i would take away is support your partner in

00:43:07.120 doing the same you know if you're in a romantic relationship recognize that you will be happier

00:43:11.780 if your partner also has better relationships with other people and that goes both ways for both

00:43:16.980 men and women in a heterosexual relationship and so i think that the takeaways here is that

00:43:22.900 in order to enjoy the great parts about being friends with people you actually have to enact it

00:43:28.420 and so i want to encourage people as much as i possibly can to take those steps to do so

00:43:32.480 well jeff this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work

00:43:36.340 yeah so at the university of kansas we have the relationships and technology lab i invite everybody

00:43:41.000 to check it out and learn a little more about my work you know i do stuff that has to do with

00:43:45.160 you know social media and how that affects our lives we do work on friendship and we do work on

00:43:49.780 you know kind of all those issues of this intersection between relationships and technology

00:43:54.260 i mean friendship is one part of that so i welcome everybody to kind of learn more about it well jeff

00:43:58.980 hall thanks for your time it's been a pleasure it has been my my pleasure thank you my guest there

00:44:04.680 is jeffrey hall he's a professor of communication studies who specializes in friendship make sure to

00:44:08.560 check out our show notes at aom.is friendship time where you find links to resources where you delve

00:44:12.480 deeper into this topic

00:44:19.780 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - January 24, 2022

How Long Does It Take to Make Friends (And How Does That Process Work, Anyway)？

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