What makes for an ideal friend? Sure, we all want to surround ourselves with people who are loyal, honest, fun, and compassionate. We are, after all, a reflection of the company we keep. But how well do our idealized views on friendship match reality? And how might friendship formation differ when it occurs in an online environment versus in live interactions?
A group of researchers at Stanford University and the University of California Davis examined these questions in a recent article published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science. Interestingly, their findings suggest that how we choose friends online is fundamentally different from how we choose friends in real life.
To arrive at this conclusion, researchers recruited 140 undergraduate students at the University of California Davis to take part in a study on social relationships. In the first part of the study, participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire that included a list of 19 personality traits (e.g., "ambitious," "generous," "sporty and athletic," etc.). From this list, participants selected what they believed to be the three most desirable traits for a friend. They also selected the three traits they felt were least desirable.
Three weeks later, the same participants were invited back into the laboratory. They were informed they would be meeting someone new and were asked to try to "determine whether or not you would like this person as a friend.” Before the meeting occurred, participants were given a one-page profile of the potential friend. Importantly, this profile described the person they would meet using either the most desirable or least desirable traits participants selected in the first part of the study. Upon reading the profile, participants were asked to gauge how likely they would be to pursue a friendship with this person.
Participants then proceeded to interact with this person in one of two ways. They either sat down face-to-face with the potential friend or interacted via a live chat. During the meeting, both the participant and the potential friend were asked to describe a series of pictures as objectively as they could. (Note that the potential friend was, in reality, an actor in the study who responded identically to all questions.) After the meeting, participants were again asked to express their level of interest in establishing a friendship with this person.
Designing the study in this way allowed the researchers to examine participants' anticipated friend preferences under three separate informational conditions: (1) with only the information provided in the profile, (2) having read the profile and observed this person in a live interaction, and (3) having read the profile and observed this person in an online chat environment. Furthermore, for each of the conditions above, participants were led to believe the potential friend either aligned or contrasted with their beliefs on what traits an "ideal" friend should have.
Here's what they found. First, and perhaps not surprisingly, participants expressed a significantly higher level of interest in becoming friends when the one-page profile included the traits they deemed to be most desirable when making new friends. However, once participants met the potential friend, the effect of the one-page profile on participants' level of interest in pursuing a friendship went away. Participants' interest in becoming friends with this person was now based entirely on their experience during the in-person meeting. Interestingly, this pattern of results also held true for the online chat. Reading someone's instant message responses to rather innocuous questions (i.e., objectively describing a series of pictures) completely erased the knowledge of whether this person conformed to one's views on "ideal" friendships.
What might this mean for everyday life? Well, it suggests that the friendships we choose to pursue from online profiles are much more likely to match our ideal standards for what a friend "should be." However, when it comes to choosing friends in live contexts—either in person or in an online chat—it seems we toss ideals out the window and rely solely on instinct.
References
Huang, S. A., Ledgerwood, A., & Eastwick, P. W. (2019). How do ideal friend preferences and interaction context affect friendship formation? Evidence for a domain-general relationship initiation process. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1948550619845925.
