Mere chance sufficient for lasting friendships

While we’re still on yesterday’s topic of friends, it’s worth mentioning a recent short report from Psychological Science entitled “Becoming Friends by Chance” that suggests that, contrary to popular opinion, the foundation of a good friendship isn’t necessarily similarities, shared likes and dislikes, or other commonalities.  Rather, this paper, published by researchers at the University of Leipzig, suggests that mere chance alone can be more than enough to establish a solid friendship.

To put it a little more scientifically, the psychologists write in their abstract:

This study examined whether randomly determined physical proximity and group assignment during an initial encounter are each sufficient to influence the likelihood of a friendship developing in a real-life context.

In this study, 54 psychology freshmen were randomly ordered and asked to introduce themselves to the class, one at a time.  As each spoke, the other students rated the presenter’s likeability and how much they would like to get to know the presenter in person.  Following this, all the participants were assigned permanent seats in the classroom, with each possible pair matching one of three conditions: in neighboring seats, in the same row, or in no relation to one another.

A year later, the same participants were asked to rate the other members of the class on a number of items designed to measure friendship intensity.  A bit of multilevel statistical analysis revealed that those that sat next to each other or in the same row reported liking each other more than those that sat across the room from each other.

As the scientists conclude:

Coincidentally being near another person or being in the same group with him or her during an initial encounter may promote the development of a friendship with that person.  In a nutshell, people may become friends simply because they drew the right random number.  Thus, becoming friends may indeed be due to chance.

Although this last bit jumps to a few conclusions a bit too quickly for my liking, the take home message seems to be that if you’re interested in getting to be friends with that guy in your history class, your best bet is to sit close to him, stick around, and cross your fingers for good luck.

Making a new friend may just be a matter of a lucky choice of seat.

Back, M.D., Schmukle, S.C., Egloff, B. (2008). Becoming Friends by Chance. Psychological Science, 19(5), 439-440. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02106.x

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Tagged as: friends, friendships, proximity, psychological science