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Childhood

The understanding of friendship by children tends to be focused on areas such as common activities, physical proximity, and shared expectations. Such friendships provide an opportunity for playing and practicing self-regulation. Most children tend to describe friendship in terms of things like sharing, and children are more likely to share with someone they consider to be a friend.

Recent work on friendship in young children investigated the cues they use to infer friendship. Young children use cues such as sharing resources, like snacks, and sharing secrets, especially in older adolescents, to determine friendship status. When comparing cues of similarity in food preference or gender, propinquity, and loyalty in adolescent children, younger children rely on similarity in gender/food preferences but more so propinquity to infer friendship while older adolescents rely heavily on propinquity to infer friendship.

As children mature, they become more reliant on others, as awareness grows. They gain the ability to empathize with their friends, and enjoy playing in groups. They also experience peer rejection as they move through the middle childhood years. Establishing good friendships at a young age helps a child to be better acclimated in society later on in their life.

Based on the reports of teachers and mothers, 75% of preschool children had at least one friend. This figure rose to 78% through the fifth grade, as measured by co-nomination as friends, and 55% had a mutual best friend. About 15% of children were found to be chronically friendless, reporting periods of at least six months without mutual friends.

Friendships in childhood can assist in the development of certain skills, such as building empathy and learning different problem-solving techniques. Coaching from parents can help children make friends. Eileen Kennedy-Moore describes three key ingredients of children's friendship formation: (1) openness, (2) similarity, and (3) shared fun. Parents can also help children understand social guidelines they have not learned on their own. Drawing from research by Robert Selman and others, Kennedy-Moore outlines developmental stages in children's friendship, reflecting an increasing capacity to understand others' perspectives: "I Want It My Way", "What's In It For Me?", "By the Rules", "Caring and Sharing", and "Friends Through Thick and Thin."

Forming and maintaining

Forming and maintaining friendships often requires time and effort. To form a friendship requires around 20 to 60 hours of interacting in the first weeks after meeting, while forming a close friendship can take more than hundred hours.

Friendships are foremost formed by choice, typically on the basis that the parties involved admire each other and enjoy commonality and socializing.

Given that friendships provide people with many mental, social, and health benefits, people should want to associate with and form lasting relationships with people who can provide the benefits they need. Thus, people have specific friendship preferences for the types of behaviors and traits that are associated with these benefits. Recent work on friendship preferences shows that while there is much overlap between men and women for the traits they prefer in close same-gender friends (e.g., being prioritized over other friends, friends with varied knowledge/skills), there are some differences: women compared to men had greater preference for emotional support, emotional disclosure, and emotional reassurance, while men had greater preference for friends that offer opportunities for accruing status that boosts their reputation, and that will provide physical aid.

Most people underestimate how much other people like them. The liking gap can make it difficult to form friendships.

According to communications professor Jeffery Hall, most friendships involve tacitly agreed-upon expectations in six different areas:

Positive regard

The friends genuinely like each other, and are not merely pretending to like each other for the purpose of social climbing or some other desired benefit.

Self-disclosure

The friends feel that they can discuss topics of deep personal significance.

Instrumental aid

The friends help each other in practical ways. For example, a friend might drive another friend to the airport.

Similarity

The friends have similar worldviews. For example, they might have the same culture, class, religion, or life experiences.

Enjoyment

The friends believe that it is fun and easy to spend time together.

Agency

The friends have valuable information, skills, or resources that they can share with each other. For example, a friend with business connections might know when a desirable job will be available, or a wealthy friend might pay for an expensive experience.

Not all relationships have the same balance of each area. For example, women may prefer friendships that emphasize genuine positive regard and deeper self-disclosure, and men may prefer friendships with a little more agency.

Evolutionary approach

Evolutionary approaches to understanding friendship focus primarily on its function. In other words, what does friendship do for individuals, how does it work psychologically, and how do these processes affect people's actual behavior. Within this field, there are multiple proposed theories or perspectives about the function of forming friendships and making friends. One is the theory of Reciprocal Altruism which provides an explanation as to why individuals make friends with un-related others. It argues that friendship allows people to exchange benefits with each other and keep track of these exchanges in order to avoid exchanging benefits with a poor cooperator, or someone who will take benefits without giving any in return. Another perspective likens friendships to insurance investments and argues when deciding to invest into forming a new friendship with another person an individual should be able to discern: whether the potential friend will be willing to help them in the future, if the potential friend is in a position to help them in the future, and if the friendship is worth continuing or not, especially when many other potential friendships can be made. These factors will determine whether forming a friendship with someone will be beneficial or injurious. Another explanation for the function of friendships is called the Alliance Hypothesis which argues that the function of friendships is to acquire alliances for future conflicts or disputes. The Alliance Hypothesis states that conflicts typically can be won if and only if one side is able to acquire more allies than the competing side, all else equal, so individuals should be able to increase their odds of winning the conflict if they are able to recruit more alliances to their side. Choosing your allies can be very important and there exists a variety of methods in deciding allies such as bandwagoning or choosing an ally that is loyal and will come to your aid in the future conflicts. Thus, individuals should form alliances (i.e., friendships) with people that ranks themselves higher than other allies/friends. It is relative rank (i.e., where the self ranks among all other individuals) that is the most important contributing factor when deciding who is a loyal ally and friend.

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Developmental psychology

Childhood

Adolescence

Adulthood

Older adults

Forming and maintaining

Developmental issues

Dissolution

Demographics

Same-sex friendships

Cross-sex friendships

Culture

Evolutionary approach

Health

Mental health

Friendship jealousy

Non-human friendship

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