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If you have ever had a time in your life when you needed to make new friends, you know it can be daunting. Everywhere you look, you see grinning groups of people laughing together. You overhear co-workers talking about a great party they went to last weekend––while you were at home, binge-watching Netflix. To make matters worse, you click on Facebook and really hit a tailspin of despair. At times, taking the first steps to create new friendships can seem like a hopeless endeavor.
But scientists are telling us that, thanks to the way our brains are hardwired, the forecast is actually much sunnier: Friends are much more easily accessible than we might expect.
First, let’s set the stage.
Research in 2009 by sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst found that because of life shifts, we replace about half of our close friends every seven years (1). This constant evolution leaves everyone open to making not just new friends, or good friends, but close friends. This makes sense. If you think about life’s big changes they tend to happen every seven years or so. We move, we change jobs, we get married or divorced, we have children, we retire, and we periodically get involved in new activities and organizations. At any given time, some of our friendships are close and active, and some are fading away, leaving room for new relationships. And we’ll always make space for someone new we meet and click with.
So the door is open, what next?
In a newly released study, researchers at the University of California, Irvine focusing on the role that positive emotions play in forming relationships reported that the first step is nothing more difficult than putting a smile on your face. It's so simple, but evidently crucially important. Researchers found that a smile is vital because when people are forming new relationships, they are highly attuned to and drawn by positive emotions (2). Leading neurologist and author Andrew Newberg explains that the smile has “enormous power” because it can “change the electromagnetic activity of your brain (3).” Specifically, our brains contain mirror neutrons that lead us to copy facial expressions. So if you smile at someone, you are almost guaranteed to get a smile back. Indeed, research shows that it is almost impossible to frown at someone who is smiling at you. (4).
Smiles also cause our brains to release feel-good neurotransmitters, making both grinning individuals experience a rush of happiness. How big of a rush? In a British study analyzed by Dr. David Lewis, author of The Secret Language of Success, researchers using brain scanning machines found that seeing a smile had the power to create a more potent positive brain boost than being given large quantities of either chocolate or cash (5).
The positive attunement study also found that smiles induce affiliation and cooperation, two central building blocks of friendship. Likewise, a 2015 study published in the Journal of Evolution and Human Behavior found that smiles foster mutual trust—another friendship mainstay (6). Smiles have also been proven to make us appear more attractive, likeable, courteous and competent. Perhaps these benefits are the reason some people are having “smile surgery” where they get a smile lift that delivers a positive impression permanently (7).
What comes after the smile?
Actually, the research shows that all it takes to move things forward is another small step: casual conversation about interests and lives. In a 2011 study on initial interactions published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers had 25 pairs of women who did not know each other sit across a table and each answer, in 30 second intervals, two to six questions about their interests and lives. When the women became familiar with each other through these questions, attraction between them developed, increased, and made them favorably inclined for further interaction. The more they interacted, the greater the attraction (8). And once we feel that we’re liked, we are automatically drawn to that person even more.
Best bet—the people who are physically around you on a regular basis. Indeed, proximity, or literally how close someone is physically to another person, is often called the most significant predictor of friendship. In fact, proximity has been found to have a greater impact on whether you will be someone’s friend than whether you have other similarities like race, age, or common interest or attitudes (9). Notably, because of a phenomenon called “exponential attraction,” literally every foot matters, with shorter distances dramatically increasing the likelihood of forming a meaningful connection (10).
Add to proximity, the well established “exposure effect,” that makes people who see each other regularly begin to think positive thoughts about each other. Even before they interact, they begin to think they would enjoy spending time together, they begin to appear more attractive and intelligent in each other’s eyes, they believe they have things in common, and they believe they have similar backgrounds, personalities, and compatible plans for the future (11). All these wonderful seeds of friendship are planted just by being physically nearby on a repeated basis.
Test it!
So I challenge you to try this out. Pick a relative stranger you see regularly, slap on a big smile, and start a casual conversation about their interests and life. Thanks to our biology, you will likely find you are well on your way to a new friendship.
Sources
1. NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research). "Half Of Your Friends Lost In Seven Years, Social Network Study Finds." ScienceDaily, 27 May 2009. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090527111907.htm>.
2. Campos, B. Schoebi, D. Gonzaga, G. C., Gable, S. L., Keltner, D. (May 26, 2015). Attuned to the positive? Awareness and responsiveness to others’ positive emotion experience and display. Motivation and Emotion, DOI10.1007/s11031-015-9494-x
3. Andrew Newberg, A. B. & Waldman, M. R. (2012). Words Can Change Your Brain: 12 Conversation Strategies to Build Trust, Resolve Conflict, and Increase Intimacy. (p. 98) New York, NY: Hudson Street Press.
4. Sonnby–Borgström, M. (2002), Automatic mimicry reactions as related to differences in emotional empathy. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 43(5), 433–443.
5. http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/one-smile-can-make-you-feel-a-milli…
6.Centorrino, S. Djemai, E. Hopfensitz, A, Milinski. M., Seabright, P. (2015). Honest signaling in trust interactions: smiles rated as genuine induce trust and signal higher earning opportunities, Evolution & Human Behavior, 36(1), 8-16.
7. http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2013/08/27/surgeons-defend-smile-sur…
8. Reis, H. T., Maniaci, M. R., Caprariello, P. A., Eastwick, P. W. & Finkel, E. J. (2011). Familiarity does indeed promote attraction in live interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(3), 557-570.
9. Preciado, P.,Snijders, T. A., Burk, W. J., Stattin, H. & Kerr, M. (2012). Does Proximity Matter? Distance dependence of adolescence friendships. Social Networks, 34, 18-31.
10. Brafman, O. & Brafman, R. (2011). Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do. (p.52-77). New York, NY: Crown Business.
12. Moreland, R. L. & Beach, S. R. (1992). Exposure effects in the classroom: The development of affinity among students. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28(3), 255-276.
