speaker-0: That's sort of the the function of friendship is to provide that help. Lacking friends has the same negative impact on your health as smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day.

speaker-1: We're less willing to put up with people because they're not providing us with as much benefit as they used to.

speaker-0: You want a friend that thinks that you can't live without you. That's the most valuable thing. Even over a relationship, a career they like, having money, being married, or their children, friendship is the number one thing.

speaker-1: Welcome to the XX Lab, where we explore the science and stories that matter to you. If you've ever found yourself feeling jealous when your best friend started hanging out with someone new, or wondered why it is that your friendships with other women can sometimes feel a little fraught, you're gonna want to stick around for the conversation with today's guest. Dr. Jamie Krems is a social and evolutionary psychologist at UCLA, where she runs both the Social Minds Lab and the UCLA Center for Friendship Research. She's one of the leading scientific voices on why we make friends, why we sometimes sabotage our friendships, and why female friendship in particular is such a beautiful, complicated, occasionally treacherous thing. Stick with us because by the end of this conversation, you're gonna understand why your female friendships feel the way they do, what the science actually says about making new friends as an adult, and what it actually means to be a truly good friend. Before we get started, please note that my opinions do not necessarily reflect those of TCU, the College of Science and Engineering, or the Department of Psychology. Instead, this is part of my mission to give women everywhere access to the science and stories to help them live well. This is the XX Lab. I'm Dr. Sarah Hill. Let's get started. Dr. Jamie Krems, welcome to the XX Lab.

speaker-0: ⁓ thank you. Thank you for having me.

speaker-1: Well, I'm so excited to talk to you because ⁓ we're gonna be talking about friendship. And what makes this conversation doubly meaningful is that you are my friend.

speaker-0: Thank you for being my friend, especially these days.

speaker-1: so so I am thrilled about ⁓ talking to you and and I also another thing that makes this like particularly exciting is that we're gonna be talking about friendship and I know that you're not gonna be filling the time with bullshit answers and that ⁓ and that you're not afraid to talk about some of the darker sides of friendship. And so Yeah, so I'm gonna start. ⁓ I'm gonna start on the bright side. Yes. Right. And we're gonna start by you have a paper that's gonna be c I think it's still forthcoming. I don't think it's ⁓ out yet, ⁓ calling friendship the most overlooked public health asset. Yes. And this is a bold claim. And so I wanna like have you tell listeners about what are the benefits of friendship. Like, why is it that this is The most overlooked public health assets.

speaker-0: Yes, okay, so let's start at the individual level. When you have social connections, you are happier, healthier, and longer lived. So for example, having friends buffers you against all sorts of mental health outcomes, anxiety, depression, suicidality. You are physically more healthy, so there are cardiovascular benefits, you handle stress better, for example. You might even heal more quickly from wounds when you have social support. So physical health, mental health, those are benefits. There's a big meta-analysis from Julianne Holt-Lundstad that suggests that having friends, or I should say, lacking friends, has the same negative impact on your health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. ⁓ So there are mortality risks to lacking friends, meaning that having them buffers us against that. ⁓ So ⁓ it could save us, you know, as a nation, if we just look at people 65 and up, ⁓ seven and a half billion dollars a year in excess health care costs, so public health benefits on the societal level. ⁓ Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard, has found that the single best predictor of economic mobility is friendship. So, for example, when lower socioeconomic status kids have connections to higher SES kids, they make twenty percent higher incomes as adults. It's just insane. Yeah.

speaker-1: So Yeah, so so w with the with the monetary benefits, like with the job advancement, is that just like the whole like it's not what you know, it's who you know kind of thing?

speaker-0: It's who you know, but it's also the habits of those folks. ⁓ so ⁓ the study habits, the confidence, ⁓ what people in academia would call the hidden curriculum. So you can go to office hours, you can argue your grade, ⁓ all of these things that are knowledge that higher SES folks often tend to have or more educated folks often tend to have, as well as the connections. Yeah, absolutely.

speaker-1: Yeah, so it's it's like one of the primary benefits I think of ⁓ friendship, and I think that your work supports this, right? Is is that knowledge base, right? Like essentially they know things that you don't know. Yeah. And so then you're able to, you know, soak up all the information from those folks, which I think is really beneficial for a lot of different reasons. ⁓ what about the health benefits? Like what ⁓ what is the mechanism behind the lesser, for example, cardiovascular risk and The faster wound healing, like wha wha what's the mechanism there?

speaker-0: Yeah, that is a really great question. ⁓ you'll hear me say this a million times. We really don't know. ⁓ so one of the things I should say off the bat is ⁓ with my grad student Hei Wan ⁓ Hong and my ⁓ friend and collaborator Bill Chopic, we did ⁓ sort of a dive into the psychological literature on friendship. so seven top psych journals from 1964 until 2024. Every single article they published. And we oversample journals that focus on close relationships where we'd find friendship work. Fewer than four percent of those articles are about friendship. it's about probably 25 or more ⁓ percent for romantic relationships, just to as a contrast. So we focus on adult friendship so little that it will be no surprise when I tell you to this question or many others, we don't know.

speaker-1: I wonder whether ⁓ you know, 'cause one thing that I've heard argued from an evolutionary perspective, like just in terms of a group membership. So this isn't necessarily about the benefits of friendship per se, but instead just about the benefits of belonging to a group, is ⁓ that you get lower levels of ⁓ sort of basal inflammatory activity. So essentially your immune system kind of is able to relax a little bit when you're around other people, just because historically if you were alone. there's a greater risk of peril either from injury or predation. You know Yeah, exactly. Predation by other humans or ⁓ by non-human species. And so having other people around sends a signal from our brain then to our immune system, telling it that it can like ease, you know, sort of relax a little bit and that that leads to lower exposure to pro-inflammatory cytokines or inflammation over the lifetime and that that might play a role. And I'm wondering whether friendship might have those same benefits, right? Because when we talk about group membership, I mean ultimately what is that? Yeah. You know, it's it's friendship, right?

speaker-0: Think it is. It's the ability to rely on other people to meet your needs if something goes wrong. Or, you know, ⁓ when something is going wrong. That's sort of the the function of friendship is to provide that help. And so if you have that sort of external resource, right, then your body can do exactly what you're saying. Your body can say, Well, I don't need to amp up and worry about a threat right now. I can relax and if there's a threat, I can recruit these resources that are external. ⁓ so where I put my, you know, my energy doesn't have to be in, I need to do X by myself, I need to do Y by myself. My energy can be in sort of somatic maintenance, my energy can be where it needs to go for success, because I have these backup resources outside of myself. ⁓ And I really do think that this the the sort of phenomenological feeling of having friends, of being supported, is sort of like one of those internal regulatory variables. ⁓ you know, like we talk about welfare trade-off ratio. it's

speaker-1: So w so just ⁓ sorry, w w can you explain to the listener what a welfare trade off ratio is?

speaker-0: So ⁓ welfare trade-off ratio is basically this idea of how much I would give up to help you. ⁓ so how much emphasis I put on your welfare. And if I put a lot of emphasis on your welfare, I'm gonna do things like help you even at a cost. and we have these sort of ⁓ and that takes in all of these inputs like w are we related? How long have I known you? Do I love you? Are you in need? Do I have resources to give? And it sort of squishes them all together, aggregates them all into this feeling of, okay, I want to help you. And I think social support kind of does something similar. ⁓ when I have this feeling of social support, then I am able to down-regulate all of the things that you're talking about, the inflammation, the readiness, the threat. ⁓ and that's probably why we see people who have friends being less stressed, who have social support, being less stressed, ⁓ whether in the lab or ⁓ there's a study in Sweden that men who have friends are less likely to have heart attacks. ⁓ and that's regardless of whether they have romantic relationships. So it really is this the sort of social support doing that.

speaker-1: So we've been hearing a lot about being in sort of a friendship recession. Yeah. Right. And do you think that, you know, when you talked about welfare trade-off ratios, this idea of how much am I willing to incur to help you out? You know, I always think about our sort of the unconscious calculus that makes those decisions. ⁓ I mean, obviously a lot of information feeds into those, but I I think one of the things that feeds into that is, you know, what's in it for me. Right. And, you know, it was just essentially like if I'm nice to you, like, like what's what's in it for me? What do you bring into my life that's positive? And, you know, I've always wondered whether, you know, as technology, because you know, one of the most important things that our friends offer us is information. I mean, historically, the larger the group, the more information we had, because the more novel sources of information we have. And now we have technology where it's like I can know anything about. anything in in you know milliseconds, right? I just like search it up online and generally I'll be able to find at least a fairly reputable answer within a you know a really short period of time. And so I've wondered whether, you know, one of the sources of the friendship recession is just that we're less willing to put up with people because they're not providing us with as much benefit as they used to.

speaker-0: Yeah, I think that's a really beautiful insight. I think that people overlook the role of technology beyond, ⁓ people are on social media so they don't spend time. One of the ways that people build friendships is through giving favors and gifts, including information, right? So you start small to not be exploited and you ratchet it up and you get closer and closer. ⁓ and so Dan Rushka, an anthropologist at ASU, has actually looked across, I think, 60 small-scale societies, so traditional societies. And this is one of the fundamental features of friendship, that they help each other, especially when in need, because of affection. And this affection gets ratcheted up through helping each other over time. If you don't need that help or ask for that help, you're not gonna get the friendship ratcheted up over time. So you get a task rabbit or an Uber to the airport or ⁓ you know, s the Instacart brings you groceries when you're sick, you are no longer doing the behavior that ratchets up a relationship to become a close friend. So I think absolutely technology has interrupted it.

speaker-1: That's so interesting. So do you think like is so a recipe for friendship? Mm-hmm. Like if you're looking to build friendship with somebody, is that you start with small favor. I'm assuming that you start small. I mean, as you said, so you don't get exploited. Exactly. And I would also assume it would probably feel awkward, right? Like if you don't know somebody really well and then they do this really big thing for you. I think that it puts us in favor debt to such an extent that it makes us uncomfortable. I mean it's ⁓ it's like

speaker-0: Romantic relationship ⁓ where you're like, do you don't want to do too much, you don't want to do too little. It's ⁓ I I get such anxiety over giving friends gifts. Like too big, too small, no gift, what you know, you want to be at the same level. So yeah, yeah, start small for sure. Otherwise

speaker-1: So so is the recipe that you start small and you invest and then you wait and see whether the other person invests in you and then do you keep raising the stakes or how long do you stay in you know, in a certain level of of of investment? I'm I'm I'm really curious about this.

speaker-0: I mean, so there's a recipe and then there are constraints, right? So friendship to to build it, you need sort of somewhat frequent interactions and then mutual attraction. So that's the start. And then you can build the closeness and affection by giving small gifts and favors, information. I will say friends are still really important for social information. You know, is that person dating that person or what's going on? Did you see them out last night? ⁓ so you you build that up, but there are constraints because ⁓ building that kind of relationship ⁓ takes time, time is inelastic, and maintaining that relationship also takes time, and time is inelastic. I am fascinated by the question of When these friendships become kinlike and we no longer need to do that. You know, I could see you at a conference and just get a lot of drinks and be very happy and tell you everything. Like I saw you yesterday. I cannot do that with many people. So when when does that happen? How does that happen? Why does that happen? We have no answers to this. We have ⁓ ⁓ there's one ⁓ bit of work that suggests it takes about two hundred hours to make a friend.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: ⁓ that's all we got.

speaker-1: It's really interesting because I think that there is a combination of I mean, if I were just to speculate, which I do a lot of,

speaker-0: The we need to solve this and we'll probably get closer today than most people have.

speaker-1: Like I feel like it is a combination of time past, just like time elapsed, right? And and trust, right? So it's it which builds in the time past. So I think that if it's like time past and positive interactions, right? So you have anytime they see this person's positive interaction, they don't ever you know b betray your trust, or there's never any sort of ⁓ an aversive stimulus that enters in. ⁓ and Yeah, yeah, and and and repeated exposure. Yeah. Which I guess is the time. I mean ultimately I guess like what I've said is time four different ways. And then like no negativity. You I mean you

speaker-0: Do need that and I so there are two things that I I should say here. one is with ⁓ one is that ⁓ with the number of people we encounter today and we move so much, there's so much freedom of choice in our relationships, kind of like swiping left or right, that I think it is easier for any negativity to make us say, ⁓ I'm done with that. Or ⁓ this is too one-sided, or this is a toxic relationship. ⁓ so that is troubling. ⁓ and it might be the fact that ⁓ the sort of abundance of choices has hindered our ability to form and maintain strong relationships. ⁓ but I I think the other thing is that what you're saying really fits with this ⁓ banker's paradox theory of friendship by Tubi and Cosmodes. ⁓ so Again, the function of friendship, they help us when we're in need. And when we're in need, strangers are the least likely to help us because we look like a bad bet for being able to repay that help, right? By contrast, friends have a stake in our continued welfare. They want us to survive because we're irreplaceable to them. By helping us when we need it most, they're irreplaceable to us. And that time and that trust and that knowledge. I think those are cues to irreplaceability or inputs into irreplaceability. ⁓ that's really, you know, you want a friend that thinks that they can't live without you. That's the most valuable thing. ⁓ I would say that's probably the most valuable thing in almost any partner.

speaker-1: Do you think yeah d I I do. I think that it's ⁓ not romantic relationships. I think that it's that way with ⁓ with friends. And I was telling my graduate students this. ⁓ it's also that way with employers. Like I always tell them, like the best thing that you can do is be irreplaceable. Yeah. So find out what it is that you can offer that makes you irreplaceable to whatever job it is that you move into. And ⁓ and not only will you be successful, but you'll be happy because you'll feel uniquely valued for this thing that makes you irreplaceable. Yeah. And so so so do you think that that's a good rule for people who are like looking for ways to deepen their friendship is find a way to be irreplaceable?

speaker-0: I mean it's a a difficult bit of advice, but absolutely that's the advice. Right. That's what ⁓ Tubian Cosmes would say. Become irreplaceable to someone and that makes you so valuable to them. By being valuable to them, ⁓ you become ⁓ or they become valuable to you if they value you that much. So you could become irreplaceable. Or you can give signals that you really value that person. ⁓ so that's the kind of thing where help when in need. But again, that's been disrupted. If you can't give them help when in need or they're not asking for it, or they're not willing to say it because it looks bad on social media that they're not doing well. You know, it's it's a difficult road to hoe today. I can't entirely figure out why yet, but w we're bringing up some of the issues that are disrupting what is maybe our most valuable relationship.

speaker-1: Yeah, I want to circle back to something that you said when you were talking about ⁓ initiating friendship and you know, before the ratcheting, you know, the sort of gradually ratcheting up process, one of the things that you mentioned was you meet somebody and there's an attraction there with a friend. And ⁓ and this is, I think, one of the most fascinating and under discussed topics in friendship and just like interaction with other people. And that is, you know, we talk a lot about attraction with Romantic partners, right? Like you're just not attracted to this person, or you're just unattracted to that person, or you are attracted to this or that person, as we were talking about before our conversation ⁓ online. And people don't talk about that with friendship. Yeah. And ⁓ and I think it's so important because there's some people you're gonna have chemistry with, and there's some people you're not going to have chemistry with. And But talk talk to me about that. Like what like do you what do we know about that? Like in science? Like what are some of the factors that influence like whether or not you're gonna be attracted to somebody as a friend? And and then if you're spending, you know, if you find yourself in this relationship with somebody that is clearly trying to create a relationship with you as a friend, but you just aren't feeling the chemistry there. Like what like what do you do with it? And so I guess like th that's a Several questions baked into one, but let's let's just start with like what what is that? What is chemistry with friends?

speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, I don't think people know the answer to this. ⁓ folks have studied conversation, folks have studied synchrony. ⁓ there's a brilliant guy named Gus Cooney, who I think is at Dartmouth now doing some of this work, and we've talked about what is chemistry. ⁓ there's a student here at UCLA, Grace Meow, who's trying to do conversations while people have a sort of brain scan helmet on. ⁓ I think maybe the the most impressive work on this topic ⁓ that can sort of speak to it at least is from Carolyn Parkinson and her lab. ⁓ so for example, ⁓ she and a grad student, Lisa Shun, did this study where they had ⁓ 300 MBA students go into an MRI and watch film clips and they scanned their brains while they watched film clips. Now this was before the Cohort, the MBA cohort had met each other. And they looked at people's neurosynchrony. So, how does your brain react to these clips? And what they find is that people who reacted more similarly or had greater neurosynchrony were more likely to become friends eight months later. So I think that there's something about the way that we experience the world. You know, ⁓ some people might call it shared reality that predicts whether or not we're gonna have chemistry. I think chemistry might be I get you, you get me.

speaker-1: That's so I think y yeah, that's so that's so fascinating. And I it as I was thinking about it, but it was like before when you were describing the study, my brain was anticipating the punchline and I anticipated what the punchline was because that makes so much sense to me. That, you know, it's like I think about the people that I'm friends with and and are my friends and I and I very much feel like they have the same view of the world that I do. I mean, in that and that it's and and it's like no we don't even have to agree on everything. I mean, I've got friends from all over the political spectrum and whatever. But it's just having a similar sensibility. Yeah. Like I think and and and I love that. I love the idea of having neural synchrony in response to things that are happening in the world. And then you get that, yeah, that d really nice like theory of mind where you feel like you understand somebody and they understand you because both of your brains are kind of tuned in and on operating on the same wavelength. Literally

speaker-0: Yeah, ⁓ and it it's friendship is is partially about or for coordination, right? So if we can work together to bend the world or shape the world in our favor, and we have the same ideas about what shape that should be, why wouldn't we do it? I ⁓ I remember talking to Aaron Cell, ⁓ an amazing evolutionary cognitive scientist ⁓ who studies emotion and particularly anger. And he was talking about ⁓ this woman he disliked who was saying that, you know, we really ⁓ rate each other on, you know, looks and fitness and this is so important to be fit. And he's like, No, I screw you, lady, it's brilliance. And he's like, ⁓ well, of course I think that, because on brilliance I win. You know? And ⁓ yes, we should shape the world such that we make the things that people value the things that you and I and our friend group have, right? to the extent we can.

speaker-1: So if you have somebody in your life and you just don't quite feel like you're on the same wavelength, like should we break up with those people? Like what like w like what it what what are your what is your thought there?

speaker-0: I mean, it depends on who else you have in your life, you know, it depends on whether you're still gonna have to see that person because they're really good friends with some of your really good friends. I think one of the most difficult things, and this is hugely understudied, ⁓ and this is something that this was the first question that ⁓ social psychologist Carrie Johnson asked me after my job talk here. She's like, what about couples friends? And was just like, ⁓ that is a can of worms because it is so difficult to find one person you like and then you have to like their partner and their partner has to get along with your partner. The you know, it's an exponentially more complex relationship.

speaker-1: Yeah, that is a that is an incredibly complex relationship. And it's like so hard whenever I see ⁓ couples and and we've had different couple friends, you know, over time. and it's like I it can it can inspire a little bit of goodwilled envy on my part where I think, gosh, you know, like it's so hard to find other, you know, other couples that work well ⁓ with ⁓ with my partner and I. And ⁓ for the reasons that you talked about, it's like trying to get everybody's personalities and interests in line. It's like I mean, it really is like fairy dust.

speaker-0: It is. there's there's one more thing, sorry, that the brain wave I had when you were asking about the the sort of chemistry question ⁓ and and making friends, which is one of the issues is I think, and maybe this is an American thing, we sort of tend to pretend that everyone could be an equally viable or good friend to us. And we We pretend that friends don't vary or prospective friends don't vary in their desirability, which is bullshit, right? And so if we're pretending that anyone in the environment could be an equally good friend to me or for me, ⁓ that's gonna make it a lot harder when I can't find somebody I like or I decide ⁓ that person isn't maybe a good fit for me.

speaker-1: Right.

speaker-0: i it's a market where some people are more desirable friends than others and the more desirable friends have greater power of choice to either be your friend or not.

speaker-1: So why do you think that is? Why do you think culturally we have this belief? Do you have any hypotheses about that?

speaker-0: So ⁓ if it's cultural I don't have the best ideas for if it's cultural, ⁓ but if it's so we have this idea that we don't keep track of friends' costs and benefits, right? Like we don't account keep one of the hallmarks of research on friendship and part of the definition of a communal relationship. Is that we don't keep accounts of whether, you know, you did this and I owe this and you did this and I owe this. I think that's true at the same time that we keep accounts, right? And so ⁓ Rob Kurzban ⁓ has this book called Why Everyone Else is a Hypocrite. And in it he talks a little bit about split brain patients and how, you know, one side of their brain. Isn't talking to the other side of their brain. So they can hold two opposing beliefs. And our very normal, non-split brains are modular and can hold two very opposing beliefs that don't have to talk to each other. And so I think in part of our brains, we are keeping track of: is this person a good friend or a bad friend? How good of a friend are they, or how good of a friend would they be, at the same time as saying, of course. Course I don't do that. I would never do that if I'm keeping track of whether you're a good friend or not. I look like a bad friend. I look like someone that would only help you if it's beneficial to me. And that's not an attractive quality in a friend. You want somebody that's going to help you because they love you. So I I think it behooves us to give the appearance, you know, when we talk about it. That, ⁓ everyone is lovely and everyone could be a good friend. likewise it behooves us to tell everybody you're my best friend, because the closer that you think you are to me, the more likely it is that you'll give me help or more help, right? So this is a a nasty business at the same time as being a very valuable relationship.

speaker-1: Yeah, that's so interesting. And I and I think that you're right. I think that th that's gotta be true, right? That that we don't or that that that we pretend that everybody's an equally viable option because to say otherwise would then beg follow up question of why. Yeah. And then we'd have to actually get down into the nitty gritty of why we like people versus you know, some people versus others. And because there is at the heart of a lot of friendship that unconscious account keeping. Yeah. that nobody wants to articulate to themselves, let alone to some let alone to somebody else.

speaker-0: I think your sense of humor is stupid or I don't like your husband.

speaker-1: Right. You know? That's so funny. What like so given that, you know, we ⁓ are have chemistry with some people and we don't have chemistry with others and that, you know, and it may be that it's because of our the way that we see the world and our brain sort of syncing up. Like, why is it that some people ⁓ are ⁓ have a gr they they click with a lot more people and then there's some people who click with fewer people. Like do you do you think that it's that different people have different, like, I don't know, synaptic patterns and and so some people like with rarer you know, sort of synaptic patterns that that, you know, sort of see the world and and respond to the world in a certain way, like ⁓ is it just a frequency thing?

speaker-0: I mean, I I think what you have sort of ⁓ just described is something in social neuroscience that they call the Anakarinina effect. ⁓ popular people's brains are more similar. So same kind of thing in ⁓ the neurosynchrony stuff again. So popular people's brains are more similar to more people. They're sort of similar to the average. Whereas lonely people's brains are different. And it's not that all lonely people are the same. Each lonely person is different. And they call it the Anakarinina effect because in the novel, ⁓ all happy families are the same, but each unhappy family is unique in its unhappiness. ⁓ So I think that that's part of it. And I just read this study too on ⁓ isolated the ⁓ I think hunter-gatherers in Venezuela or something like that. More popular people also had more similar gut microbiomes to other people. So they have more similar brainwaves. They have more similar gut microbiomes. ⁓ we can't know if they're sort of infecting other people to think like them, or they just ⁓ are able to pick up on these things. We don't know why this happens, but there is a sort of There is something about people who get along with a lot of other people, ⁓ in terms of their biological, neurological similarity to others.

speaker-1: That's so fascinating. And it also like I wonder, you know, so if you're somebody who has difficulty making friends, right? And and just because you don't really you feel like you don't click with a lot of people. I think on the one hand, it's like nice, like it just might be that you're distinct. Yeah. Right. And and that you see the world differently. And I think that there could be value in understanding yourself and your worldview and the things that make you distinct. And then if you're looking to create more friendships, because like one thing that I I know about ⁓ people is that so many people do feel lonely, but then they feel totally at a loss about what how to make friends. Right. Especially as an adult. 'Cause like when you're in a kid, you know, you have all these people that you're around all the time or you go to college and you're around all these other people who have a similar goal to you. And ⁓ And then you get out into adulthood and it's just like the wild west. You've got to figure it out on your own. And so I wonder whether there ⁓ there's value in trying to wrap your arms around what it is that makes your brain distinct from other people's. And then seeing if you can find a way to find other people who might have those same sorts of sensibilities that you do. so because you know, I we hear a lot about like, You know, if you want to meet, and I would love your I would love your take on how to make friends as an adult. Yeah, yeah. That's what you hear. I mean, this is the advice you get, right? It's like, ⁓ we'll join a club. And it's like, you know, well, just because I like making pottery, yeah, that doesn't mean that other people who make pottery are gonna kinda have the same sensibility I do. And so I'm wondering whether there's some way to tap into like the that sort of sensibility and then get us toward other people who have the same sensibility that we do in the world.

speaker-0: I mean, if you could figure out the thing, if you're a lonely person, you have trouble making friends maybe, and you could figure out the sort of thing that makes you weirdest or most unique, right? And find other people that connect with you on that, I think that would be the way to go. And maybe that is a club, you know, maybe you go to the club for people who have albino iguanas. I don't know. You you figure it out. I go to HBest, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. I think that group of people thinks very differently from other people, just the way that we think. And I get along with these people like family, whereas I don't have that in any other society, you know?

speaker-1: Yeah, I always I always call that my tribe. Yeah. Like because it it very much feels that that way. And I I think that and I don't know whether you had this experience, but ⁓ you know, because as you kind of go through life and you're building your career and and going and getting educated and doing all those things, you kind of find yourself in a smaller and smaller, like a narrower pool. ⁓ th I found that like when I was in high school, you know, I had I had friends But I didn't I never felt like like I found people that I s like super connected with. And then when I went to college, I got a few of those. And then when I when I went to grad school, I got a ton of those. ⁓ and it was just like, you know, sort of narrowing the pool to be around other people, again, likely who, you know, our our brain waves are are sort of tapping into the the same, you know, things and and sort of having a very similar sensibility about the world. Yeah. And And and I think that that's ⁓ you know, I I have this conversation with my children who have inherited my, you know, eccentric brain. Yeah, my weirdness. And ⁓ you know, and I s and I I told them like as you, you know, progress through life, it's gonna be increasingly easy for you to find friends because you're going to be around more similar others than you are when you are in ⁓ elementary, middle, and high school.

speaker-0: Yeah, I I think we are a very lucky success story to be weird people who found our weird people.

speaker-1: Yeah. So do you have any as as somebody who studies friendship, do you have any advice on ⁓ like what other people can do besides join the human behavior and evolutionary society? ⁓

speaker-0: One of the issues again is that we don't study this, right? I don't actually know of any friendship interventions, right? ⁓ so my my grad student, Hei Won Hong, and ⁓ a former postdoc here, Lisa Walsh, are about to start this study on a gratitude intervention for friendship maintenance. Gratitude interventions are huge. They're all over the literature. ⁓ I don't know of any that targeted friends before. It's wild. So that is one of the things that we're about to do is solicit from journalists who talk about friendship, ⁓ brilliant researchers like you, and even just regular everyday folks and practitioners, you know, friendship coaches, authors, ⁓ we're gonna ask them, how would you make friends? How would you keep friends? And some other questions. ⁓ figure out which interventions are actionable and maybe scalable, and try and do ⁓ something called a mega study where we put all of these interventions out into the world across the states and maybe in different nations as well, ideally, and figure out what works and for whom. Because I can't answer your question with data. I can answer your question with vibes, but

speaker-1: Right.

speaker-0: You want the vibes? I'll give you the vibes.

speaker-1: No, I gonna say well first yeah yes, no, but I love that you're doing I love that you're doing that work 'cause I think it's so important and and and yeah, and now and so the vibes just like catch yeah.

speaker-0: So the vibes would be ⁓ ask people for help. ⁓ that is a huge thing to do that ratchets up your relationship. And we also have this thing called the Ben Franklin effect, ⁓ which I love because he spent a lot of time in my hometown of Philadelphia. They're the mascots over there, Gritty and ⁓ the Philadelphia fanatic. ⁓ so One of the things that this this effect is basically you like people better after you do a favor for them. it sounds kind of weird. The predominant explanation is cognitive dissonance.

speaker-1: I was about to say cognitive dissonance. Yeah.

speaker-0: God, I hope more people are listening than watching this. So that's wrong. ⁓ cognitive dissonance is I mean, on some levels, sure. But the way that the mind works in terms of friendship is that if you do a favor for them, they like you better. You've become more irreplaceable to them, more valuable to them. Therefore they should be more valuable to you. And so if you do them a favor, that would be great.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: ⁓ but you can also ask them for a favor and they will like you more. So that is one of the things that I would suggest doing. ⁓ I would also suggest, you know, going to places where you do re-encounter people that might have similar interests. If that's joining a club, go for it. ⁓

speaker-1: I do think ⁓ no, please.

speaker-0: ⁓ it priority, prioritizing friendship, period. ⁓ so one of the issues that ⁓ people encounter is that they are lonely, but they don't spend the same time and effort on trying to find a friend as they would a partner or a job, right? And that makes sense because these are fundamental pillars of your life. But so is friendship. And it does such good for you. It is The thing that makes adults happiest, even over a relationship, a career they like, having money, being married, or their children. Friendship is the number one thing. And so, at least in one survey, I should say. ⁓ if this is true, we should prioritize it as individuals. And yes, we are stretched for time. So maybe do chores together. It doesn't have to be an outing. Just make the time and prioritize it. And yes, that's difficult because you know the world is set up to ⁓ support, if not subsidize marriage, right? Our tax laws. But we don't do this for friendship.

speaker-1: So I recently read an article about groups of people getting together and having admin days where they'll like get together on a Saturday afternoon once a month and they'll do all their administrative stuff, like pay their bills and answer the emails from, you know, the soccer coach for signing up for snack and you know, doing all of the kinds of nitty gritty things that everybody has to do in everyday life that people hate. ⁓ I love And making it yeah, and making it a social time. And I and and I loved that because I know that especially for adults, ⁓ and it you know, and and then when you have children, it ⁓ it it magnifies this by ⁓ ten, I feel like. ⁓ you get so caught up in the day to day of day to day that it becomes really hard to even spend time with people that you enjoy. Absolutely. And so yeah, finding a way to double dip that. And and and with the when I was almost interrupting you, I was thinking about ⁓ You know, there's ⁓ I I really do think there's something to the mere exposure effect. And for those of you listening who don't know what that is, this is this like old idea in social psychology that ⁓ when you s are exposed to something frequently, provided it's not an ab like a totally aversive stimulus, that you come to develop a fondness for it. And it's believed to be rooted in sort of our deep evolutionary. ⁓ ideas of kinship and that historically the people that we would have been seeing frequently were either members of our coalition or relatives. And so, you know, provided that somebody isn't completely aversive, then we come to develop a fondness for them and and care about them. And, you know, I was ⁓ I was thinking about this with that conference that you and I go to. ⁓ every year and there was a particular ⁓ individual that I would see and I absolutely and and this person even was aversive to me. ⁓ but then after and I'll tell you who it is offline. Yeah. ⁓ I yeah, I was gonna say I and when when you find out who it is, you'll No, I totally like I feel the same way. ⁓ But you know, I would see this person and he made me crazy. But then it was like I I started kind of started to care about his welfare after I saw him enough times at the conference. ⁓ even though he made me crazy, it was like I felt like if he needed help, I would help him. Yeah. Yeah. And so doing things where you have repeated exposures, like go if you go to the same coffee shop, you're gonna and especially you go to the same coffee shop at the same time, you're gonna see the same people say hello. You know, and I think that that's a good way to to develop meaning I mean, even to start, you know, relationships. And another thing that I had noticed, and ⁓ and then we'll move on. I wanna start asking you some questions about female friendship because your work on this is so interesting. But so I do the wordle in the morning. and and I don't know whether you also do the wordle in the morning, but

speaker-0: Wordle, I do the crossword, I do spelling bee, I do connections and I do wordle. If my father hasn't done wordle before me, 'cause he's on the East Coast, then he might do it and beat me.

speaker-1: Yeah, so so one thing that I do is I send my wordle score to my mom and then I check in with her. And then I have this ⁓ this great aunt who I hadn't seen in a long time and it turned sh her and my mom started doing the wordle together. And so I started sending her my score also and just checking in. And I realized, you know, and now like, you know, and she's older and, you know, we don't know how many years she has left. But ⁓ you know, 10 years ago when I didn't really have any contact with her, if she would have passed away, I obviously would have been sad, but it wouldn't have I wouldn't have felt it in the way that I would feel it now, just because we have this repeated interaction. And it's very small. It's just we share our wordle scores and, you know, say something about the weather or what we have going on that day or whatever it is, or if she's got an appointment. And it got me really thinking about how simple it really is to matter to other people. Yeah. And to have meaningful relationships with other people. And and it's just a matter of having in at these little touch points. Yeah. Right. And so if you are looking somebody who's looking for relationships and looking to add meaning into your life or whatever, it can be as simple as, you know, checking in with your friends in the morning or sending them the Wordle score. Or, you know, ⁓ because it it's it's it it it creates like an imprint in somebody else's brain and and it it creates meaning for us.

speaker-0: It does. I I love that. I I am part of a WhatsApp group that's I don't know, twenty people. and we're all assholes. and it's so delightful. I don't even have to participate. ⁓ thankfully there's one person that's, you know, prolific. I don't know how he's so successful and so prolific on WhatsApp because I this is not the only group he's in. So given that, you know, just having that group, that basic thing, it even if it's not once a day, it kind of this kind of makes me want to go back to the COVID group that you got together and just have a WhatsApp for us, just to check in and be like, Hey, saw you were in the ⁓ Epstein papers. What's going on?

speaker-1: So I love that idea. I loved I loved our little I loved our little coho our COVID cohort.

speaker-0: It made me so happy and thank you so much for including me in that 'cause it it changed my life to have friendship during that, you know? It was and I was living in Oklahoma, so I I needed it.

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that actually makes a really great segue because we're gonna talk about female friendship. And this group that we belong to was a group of female ⁓ researchers ⁓ who are all friends. And ⁓ I wanna talk to you about this because there is a cultural narrative out there that you know, friendship between women is sort of these are these relationships that are uniquely supportive. and emotionally rich. ⁓ but there's also a competing narrative that they're kinda uniquely treacherous. Yes. And so I wanna s know what science actually says about the nature of female friendship. Yeah.

speaker-0: So folks like Joyce Benenson and Tanya Reynolds work on this. it is a fascinating topic to me. ⁓ and it's part of the reason I got into this work in the first place ⁓ was because I had female friendships that went horribly, horribly, horribly awry. so they're hard and they for me they feel like more work. Because I am, I am, i it's like the beginning of female friendships is like walking on the kitchen floor when there's broken glass. Whereas male friendships, it's just like, ⁓ sand, whatever, who cares? so in any case, yes. So the science would say yes to what you're saying. ⁓ folks like Lionel Tiger, ⁓ if I'm pronouncing his last name right, which by the way, really funny name, Lionel Tiger.

speaker-1: That's really funny. I never I never caught the lion part, but it is lionel tiger. Yeah. That's really funny.

speaker-0: Are very strange, my guy. So he particularly looks at male friendships, and he would say, you know, male friendships are the zenith of support. They're the real thing, whereas female friendships, they can't really exist. ⁓ folks like Aristotle would have said that. ⁓ and to some extent, even Joyce Benninson is like, do females really benefit one another as friends? Because ⁓ she comes from a view ⁓ sort of primate behavioral ecology where the males defended the group. So another male in the group is always gonna be valuable to you. They're always gonna provide benefit. Whereas if you add another female to the group, that's not necessarily the case. There's definitely a cost to another mouth in the group, right? ⁓ For for the males, that cost is defrayed. For the females, it isn't necessarily defrayed. It means you have to, you know, go further for food, have a larger range. Maybe males are interested in that female resources, ⁓ whether they're friendship resources or ⁓ mating resources get deferred to her instead of you. So She would suggest that there might not be strong benefits for female friendships. ⁓ The late great Anne Campbell might say no, female friendships are hugely important. ⁓ They really support each other. ⁓ I believe that all of these things are true at the same time. Female friendships are potentially more difficult. Then female-female friendships are potentially more difficult than male-male friendships for a number of reasons that we can get into. ⁓ yes, some of them can be treacherous. Yes, some of them can be painful. ⁓ that's the greatest breakup I ever had was with my best friend of twenty years. I get it, you know, like her dad didn't love her. She was mean. Sorry, I'm so I'm still bitter. ⁓ but ⁓ yes.

speaker-1: I am

speaker-0: To all of this, ⁓ they can be treacherous, they can be amazing.

speaker-1: So why so what I've heard you say is that ⁓ throughout history and for other primates as well as humans that when males are together, right, essentially another male coming into the group offers benefits, right? So they can potentially help you ⁓ protect and and sort of you know, hold on to your territory, right? So having another male coalition member is just like a a net win. ⁓ but for a female ⁓ given that women don't generally work together to get the resources that they need. So, like for example, gathering doesn't require multiple people in the same way that hunting does or protection does. That that for women, adding another group member, ⁓ you know, even though the men might benefit from having that other group member, because here's somebody else that they can potentially have children with or have sex with. Yep. ⁓ but that for women, it means you know, not only might their partner have eyes for this other person, right? But that there's another mouth to feed and they're not getting the benefits of ⁓ you know, that that men get, for example, with collective action just because because gathering doesn't require that. Yeah. And so, ⁓ and so do you think that women just don't have kind of the the group like the sort of group psychology like like men do? Or like like why what is it that makes these relationships with women more difficult? Is it just that we didn't need we didn't rely on each other over evolutionary history, you know, for access to resources or pr protecting our kids or like w w what's the story there?

speaker-0: The best guess I have is from throughout our evolutionary history, the potential costs outweighed the potential benefits in ways that you know, are are flexible for time of life, right? So if you have ⁓ another female around who is helping you raise your offspring, that's really valuable. but ⁓ yeah, that's that's the best idea that I have heard. ⁓ that given a long history of ⁓ a sort of males staying in their natal group and females leaving, you had males being around kin and coalition members. They had greater benefits for in their relationships with other males than females typically did. ⁓ and yet at the same time, right, we see female-female relationships as being some of the most supportive and ⁓ Some of the advice for men is to act like a woman in your friendship, quote unquote. ⁓ be more open, be more supportive, talk about your feelings. I don't know if that's necessarily beneficial because men and women might tend to do friendship differently. of course, there would be benefits probably for men, you know, getting that social support and sharing their feelings and all of that, but it it really does seem to be. Again, I don't know the the true route, but the best answer that I've heard is this this evolutionary history of costs and benefits.

speaker-1: It's really interesting as I was thinking through it because for a woman, the benefits of, for example, bringing in a new female, right? A new woman into the group. ⁓ you know, you you can understand, you know, if you take an evolutionary lens, like why that wouldn't have like fewer benefits, for example, to a woman and and what the cost might be. So I I think that that sort of minimizes sort of our our willingness to just be friends with anybody. Yes. Right. But I also think that the cost ⁓ to a female of being ostracized from the group lethal is lethal. And I think that that would be more dangerous for women. So it's almost like it's this it's this paradox, right? Where it's like the ben like you don't get these like huge benefits ⁓ that like sort of are just like a a net win like you do for men joining a group ⁓ for women. But The costs of of being cast out are are astronomical. And so where does that leave us?

speaker-0: You need to find the person that will always have your back. And that's a harder task than finding somebody who's gonna sit next to you and not hit you.

speaker-1: Do you think that that's why women for women friendship is oftentimes more about these like one on one kind of dyadic, you know, ⁓ types of where they where there's a lot of sharing and, you know, sort of like you and me time, ⁓ whereas for men it's more about like doing something together, like going to play pick up basketball or whatever it is.

speaker-0: Yeah, I mean people talk about women's ⁓ friendships as being face to face and they share potentially very dangerous information with one another, information that could, you know, you could ruin my life, Sarah, if you wanted to. so we share that kind of information and get closer. ⁓ whereas men tend not to do that, they tend to do activity-based things. And I should say, you know, just for for people listening, ⁓ it's not that women always do X and men always do Y. There's sort of a wide distribution and some women have these team friendships and some men have these dyadic friendships. ⁓ it's flexible as well. So it's not, you know, we're not saying men are from Mars and women are from Venus over here. but It does seem to be exactly what you're saying. And then another piece of that is the amount of time it takes to find that person limits women's ability to have, you know, multiple friendships. So men tend to have more friends and looser friendships. Women tend to have fewer, deeper friendships. and so we do see these differences.

speaker-1: So do you think that some women have a more difficult time maintaining because we t you talked about the fact that sometimes you get, you know, these really close relationships with women and there's a lot of sharing and they're uniquely ⁓ sort of intimate ⁓ in a way that a lot of times ⁓ men's friendships are not. ⁓ do you think that some women just form those relationships everywhere? Or do you think that it's that all of us have a little bit of, you know, we've got some where we have friendships that are characterized by closeness. And then we have these other relationships that we maintain just simply because we're trying to avoid getting cast out of the group.

speaker-0: Yeah, I I honestly I think that might be the case. I I mean I I am wary of saying my brain is what the brain is like, right? But I think that I've experienced the fact that with women friends there's a little bit more translation, especially in the beginning, that we're saying a thing that's a little bit different than what's really happening. Or it's more likely that with my female friends that's the case and I'm translating, I'm ⁓ intuiting, I'm trying to figure out, okay, how do I do this? Don't want to piss them off, want them to like me. ⁓ I don't have that with men, and I think that men don't tend to have that with ⁓ each other. And ⁓ so one of the cool things to me ⁓ is when women Do this sort of subtle aggression. say, you know, you're out with your husband and a woman looks at you and is like, you know, and your husband might just not even notice it, or even if you try and describe it, he'd be like, Huh? What? I don't was that was mean? When? But we get it. We feel it. We have a language that we are speaking to each other. It it's like, you know, we're whales and they don't hear us.

speaker-1: So Yeah. When I first started ⁓ dating my now husband, we were at a work event and he had a female associate who was it was pretty clear that she was interested in him. And he and I were standing next to each other and she kept boxing me out when we were having conversation and I was getting increasingly irritated by this, you know, ⁓ transaction. And I told him about it later and he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. But then I talked to his one of his female, one of his his colleagues who's a woman, and I talked to her about it, and she said, Yeah, I totally saw that. And and ⁓ it was totally inappropriate. And anyway, it's ⁓ goes to show that there is this other hidden language and ⁓ and it also reminded me of of of two things. one of Which was ⁓ is Tanya Reynolds' work on, you know, like bless her heart. Yeah. Right. Which is she's trying so hard. She really put some Yeah. Yeah. So ⁓ i th th in and this is this research that shows that ⁓ women will oftentimes gossip about one another, but do it in the guise of of deep concern. Yeah. Right. Like, you know, you know

speaker-0: Hard. Effort into

speaker-1: Alice, you know, bless her heart. She's having all this unprotected sex and I'm so worried about her. Yeah. ⁓ because I'm afraid she might get an STI. And, you know, we we take this concern, but ultimately it's our way of being able to ⁓ derogate and ⁓ and slander our con specifics. Yeah. And ⁓ and and it it it really is like so much more sophisticated than ⁓ than what you see with male aggression. Yeah men just push each other and then they get over it and then ⁓ and then you know it's done. But with women there's the a little bit more subterfuge and and yeah, deceit. And in fact ⁓ we had a really wonderful speaker out and she's ⁓ she studies aggression. Mm-hmm. And she was studying aggression in ⁓ girls and boys, and this was high school aged kids. And so she bought everybody in in a school iPhones. ⁓ wow. And the deal was that she just got to to have all of their text messages transcribed. And she was looking at aggression. And what she said was most striking was that girls are ⁓ incredibly aggressive, but they always have an element of deniability in the way that they aggress. And in the text messages, it would be saying something really terrible about somebody and then following it with an LOL or a winky face or something where it could then be, you know, you could deny that, ⁓ you know, I was just being silly and ⁓ I was just being funny. And yeah, it's it's it's it's a totally different ball game. So if if if women have friendships Right, friendships where this sort of thing is going on, does that mean that's not a real friend? Like do we try to repair the relationship? Like what do you what what is is is there any research on what this means and what we do with it?

speaker-0: I mean, ⁓ so one of the issues that we have in in looking at this versus say male friendships, if two men punch each other, they punch each other, they know they punched each other, that's that. ⁓ with the female aggression here, ⁓ including amongst of friends, right, it's at least a three person interaction usually, ⁓ which makes it exponentially more complex. And so, and this is one of the things I think indirect aggression work ⁓ tends to miss is that the deniability isn't just to the ⁓ in case it gets out to the victim, right? The deniability is so that you still look good to the person you're talking to. You are more convincing ⁓ as a as a derogator if you're saying, well, this person sucks or ⁓ bless her heart, she tried so hard. Or in some of my work, we looked at venting among friends. And so if I vent to one mutual friend about another, saying, ⁓ my God, she's so selfish, she just stood me up for dinner again, versus saying, like, I hate her, she stood me up for dinner. I'm really upset. In the venting instance, I harm how good of a friend that target looks like. I I harm that target's reputation in the eyes of the person listening to me while not harming my reputation in the eyes of the person listening to me. I look better while hurting that target just as much if as if I would have said, she sucks, she's selfish, I hate her.

speaker-1: So so what is it like how do you know that it's venting? Do you just have to say like I just need to vent? Is that is that how you sort of set that aside as I'm not talking, I'm not saying bad things about this person, I just need to vent? Yeah.

speaker-0: I I think it's the same kind of deniability as the LOL or the winky face. If you take a tone of just like, ⁓ I'm so frustrated and I have to vent versus I'm angry, I'm upset, this is not okay, ⁓ I hate her. ⁓ so we we actually looked at what counted as venting with a ton of undergraduate RAs, and it really is just sort of the tone of I am hurt. I am frustrated. And that seems to make it harder for people to identify the act as aggression, despite the fact that venting is actually more effective at manipulating affection than derogation. So when I vent to you about a mutual friend, you will prefer me to that mutual friend and preferentially support me over them. You don't do that if I derogate. ⁓ you don't do that if I just, you know, self-disclose you might like me better, but then I haven't also effectively derogated the person in your eyes or lowered their your affection for them.

speaker-1: If you if you talk about that person like your friend did something bad to somebody else, like it's so that it it doesn't so it's not just that I'm just wondering about that as a control, right? Because in the in the case of like venting, it's generally because somebody did something to hurt you. Yeah. Right. So that's suggesting that this person isn't just a bad person, but that they are willing to hurt a friend. Like if we compare that to a control condition, let's say where y where we say that, you know, Sally did this to Susie. Yeah. Instead of Sally did this to me. is it the to me is is that special?

speaker-0: You know, I think there are different components going on. So we we measured we had people ⁓ be the listener in these scenarios where a mutual friend either vented about or derogated a target. everybody's equal friends in most of these conditions. ⁓ and in the venting condition, the listener, the participant, liked the venter a lot better than the target. We didn't see that in the derogation condition. They like them equally. But what we did see, the controls that we did have, and I wish we would have had the control you're talking about, the controls we did have were just sort of neutral gossip and self-disclosure. When that happens, ⁓ listeners, the participants like that target a lot, but of course that doesn't harm the the ⁓ they like, sorry, they like the vendor a lot, but that doesn't harm the target, right? The target's reputation. ⁓ or I could say like, ⁓ my car broke down again and sort of venting about something else. Again, you'll like me more because I'm disclosing, I'm sharing, ⁓ but you don't get the benefit of harming the target. So I think if you did what you're talking about, you probably do get those same benefits of venting because the target is still doing something bad. But here you are not being aggressive, just sharing this information. And it it reminds me of this really amazing work from Steven Pinker on implicature. And he even mathed it out. So basically, you know, it's it's if you get stopped by a cop, you could get a ticket and that's bad. But you could also say, Officer, I'll give you a bribe if you take away this ticket. And so if that happens, then you know, the range of costs and benefits are different. ⁓ instead of just getting the ticket, you could go to jail for bribery. Or you could get out of it if he takes the bribe, right? Right. So you have a different sort of floor and ceiling. if you use implicature and say, officer, is there a way we could take care of this here? Everybody knows it's a bribe, but the ceiling of going to jail because you tried to bribe someone isn't there anymore. You don't have certainty that this is what the person meant. You don't have common knowledge. You don't have the ability to clearly and convincingly communicate to other people that it was for sure a bribe. So I think a lot of indirect aggression, including venting, is implicature like this. It takes advantage of the high benefits of really hurting somebody. While ⁓ removing the huge costs of seeming aggressive to folks.

speaker-1: Yeah, I think there's so much in life, like, and I'd never heard this word implicature, but just sort of referring to the way I'm taking it is essentially like deniability. Right. I mean, it's it's like there's an air because ⁓ n nobody has perfect information like when they say something. And so we're always having to infer what they mean. And so if we talk about it in sort of it sort of clouded ways, then ⁓ we have that element of deniability. And we use this in in flirting and courtship all the time because all that flirting really is is like trying to let somebody know that you're interested with a huge degree of deniability.

speaker-0: politics, the you know, that with the dog whistle. Like, ⁓ you're really saying this to this audience, but we don't know. Was Elon Musk doing a a Nazi salute? We don't know.

speaker-1: Right. Right. So interesting. I've got so I've heard from and and you said something to this effect in ⁓ just a few moments ago. And I want to circle back to the idea of some women have a hard time making friends with other women. Yeah. Right. And I and I hear about this all the time. Like, you know, I'm a guy's girl, right? Like I ⁓ it's easier for me to get along with men, or ⁓ I just have a really difficult time getting along with women. ⁓ what What separates those people who have a difficult time getting along with women, with other women, from those who have a really easy time of it?

speaker-0: I mean I wish I wish I had a better answer to this. We should probably ask your former student, Hannah Bradshaw. ⁓ because you guys have that that amazing work on this. but I would I would guess that it's the anxiety of trying to decode the implicature, basically. you're either genuinely less able to do that well and speak that language, and or ⁓ the anxiety of having to do that takes a toll on you. ⁓ that really used to be the case for me. I I showed up to Oklahoma State University where I used to work and there's this amazing woman there, Judin Bird Craven, who runs the Oklahoma Center for Evolutionary Analysis. And I told her, women scare me. So please just be blunt with me. Just tell me It's so much easier for me when I know, like, did I do this right? Did I do this wrong? I don't feel that way anymore. And I don't know if that's ⁓ just the distance in time from when my female friends really went behind my back and broke my heart, or I'm more confident, or what's going on? But that is certainly the anxiety of it.

speaker-1: Mm.

speaker-0: ⁓ might really take a toll on some people. It's just harder.

speaker-1: Yeah, I think that ⁓ Hannah's Hannah's original hypothesis was ⁓ was attractiveness. and that ⁓ and that and that attractive women had a more difficult time being friends with other women because other women would be more difficult with them because they didn't want them as part of their group because of the increased competition. Yeah. ⁓ and and and and it took various flavors. And I don't know that her hypothesis was ⁓ fully supported. I think there was some evidence of that, that some of the women who ⁓ who reported that they had more romantic successes, for example, had a more difficult time, but that clearly wasn't the whole picture. Like there's a lot more to it. And I do think that the idea of ⁓ of the anxiety around that, I think is really interesting. Yeah. Like, do you do you think the competition, ⁓ I mean, you know, because so much that I hear from from women who are struggling with their relationships with other women is just around this idea of competition, right? Where there there's this like element of competitiveness. And this could be true whether it's, you know, for romantic partners. I hear this from my my college students and my graduate students that there's a lot of sort of seeming competition for mates. ⁓ in the workplace, ⁓ you get women feeling more competitive with other women. And I'll admit, I'll admit to having felt this. Like I feel more ⁓ sort of the possibility of social comparisons between myself and my female colleagues than I do with my male colleagues. So I'm just more aware of what they're doing. Well I mean, I just ⁓ I'm just aware of what they're doing in a way that I'm not with my male colleagues. I can I can sense that there's some comparison going on, right? And ⁓ and and I think that ⁓ you know when when my kids were younger, like with the other moms, there was a little bit of that. I I don't feel any of that anymore, which has been really interesting as I've gotten older. I I ⁓ definitely have more of a ⁓ like c you know communal sort of, you know, singing kumbaya around the campfire ⁓ with other women in a way that I didn't when I was younger. Like when I was in my twenties and thirties, I definitely felt ⁓ myself feeling more competitive with other women. And yeah, and I just wonder whether your research has any sort of anything to say about competition among women and and is there some sort of a mindset that we can adopt as women to help us navigate this all or nothing? Cause I I think that it was kind of some zero sum thinking that I used to carry around with me that made me ⁓ have a more difficult time forming friendships with other women that I like I said, I've I've grown out of that. That's been, you know, there's a lot of things about aging that I don't love. But ⁓ but this has been a really nice benefit. Has been, you know, since my mid to late thirties onward, ⁓ I've definitely a lot of the feelings I used to have when I was younger about feeling like I needed to, you know, be better and and otherwise I was, you know, nothing or whatever those voices are. ⁓ I think I've gotten over that. But I'm I'm just curious if there's what your thoughts are. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

speaker-0: They, you know, so not only do they have greater concern about doing better than their friends, if they do better, their friends get upset. So this is a concern that reflects a reality. we're actually considering doing this study in adult women. ⁓ you know, ⁓ young adult women, we might find the same thing. And maybe ⁓ women our age or older, maybe it's gone. we really don't know. Which again, mind boggling all that we don't know when ⁓ we've had friendship for, you know, our entire evolutionary history. Then again, you know, I I say like how can we know nothing? But we haven't solved mating. ⁓ Dan Conroy Beam maybe has, I don't know. ⁓ but we haven't solved that and we've been studying it for hundreds of years.

speaker-1: I t I I when you said that it ⁓ about women and and and and Joyce Bennison's work on ⁓ essentially the the cost of success with women, I think about the Academy Awards, which I don't ever watch because I don't like those shows, but when I see these when I see these speeches, when I see these speeches and you know, women are always ⁓ so they're they're so ingratiating of themselves by By saying, you know, I want to thank this, and I want to thank this person, and this person did this, and this person. And ⁓ and they're deflecting, I think, because of fear of envy. Because I think that envy, and so I did research, some of my very first research when I was a graduate student back in like, you know, 2004 was on envy. And ⁓ and it was definitely more characteristic of female friendships than male friendships, ⁓ where there's a lot more sort of hidden envy. and again, that gets at that thread of competitiveness that oftentimes can sort of be an undercurrent within female friendships. And so, ⁓ I've always thought about modesty and we always talk about how modesty is, you know, this female thing and that it's, you know, society pushes it on women. But I think that women actually, you know, sort of ⁓ create this on their own as a way to try to deflect the costs of being successful because ⁓ You know, it can be really challenging. ⁓ and I think this is true for women and men. Like when you're really when you have been successful to try to make sure that people don't have a target on your back. Yeah.

speaker-0: ⁓ I'm absolutely that's the case. ⁓ I mean, you look at all of the Mediterranean cultures, they all even have these different sort of apotropaic things like the the hand with the eye in it or a figa, ⁓ you know, all of these things to ward off envy because if people want what you have, they're gonna try and take what you have. You really don't wanna be envied. ⁓ but it it really is a a ⁓ An interesting question to me that I don't think has been answered that why this is stronger in female friendships than male friendship.

speaker-1: Yeah, it's like it's like we want to be successful but not we and we want people to admire us but not envy us. Yes. And ⁓ and that's a it's a tricky it's a tricky boundary, you know? It really does. So I want to switch gears from envy to jealousy. And I want to talk about your research on friendship jealousy. And I when I first read this ⁓ line of of Research of yours, I felt seen because I've had so many, you know, when you're especially when I was younger, like a a young girl, I remember. So I had a best friend who lived in my neighborhood, ⁓ Carrie Fenn. And and she was my best friend. And I remember that there was another girl who lived in our neighborhood that every once in a while I'd see her riding bikes with. And I It made me feel so upset. And even at a young age, I was like, why is this making me so sad ⁓ to see my friend enjoying herself with another friend? And ⁓ anyway, I remembered that even from when I was a small girl with my neighborhood best friend. And yeah, I I want to talk about friendship jealousy. So what is it? And ⁓ and are there sex differences and how it works?

speaker-0: Yeah, so friendship jealousy, like any other emotion, is what we call a sort of neurocomputational program in the brain. So it's an evolved emotion. It coordinates our behavior, our cognition, our physiology. ⁓ it is ⁓ negative to experience, but beneficial for us to experience. So it is a useful emotion. It's not what we'd call, you know, clinically maladaptive necessarily. ⁓ although a lot of work in the past would have said that jealousy is ⁓ especially over friends, you only get that in an ad ⁓ as an adult if there's something wrong with you, if you're abnormally developing. ⁓ I have a quote from someone in the New York Times that says that feelings of friendship, jealousy as an adult exist because you don't understand what friendship is. You know, it's it's really insulting. ⁓ that is but the the truth of the matter is that adults feel friendship jealousy, and we were some of the first people to show that. ⁓ it's true across cultures, so we see this ⁓ in ethnog in ethnographic work, and even non-human animals engage in behavior that's consistent with feelings of friendship jealousy. So female Mustangs form really close dyadic friendships, and if an interloper comes in,

speaker-1: Insulting.

speaker-0: One of the female Mustangs might bite and kick that interloper to keep her away from her best friend. ⁓ we see this in male chimpanzees too. There's jealous guarding of friends. So friendship jealousy is an evolved, useful emotion that tells us somebody might be replacing us in a valued relationship. and it prompts us to act in ways ideally that maintain that relationship. ⁓ My guess is that some of the reasons that people have thought, researchers have thought this is a problematic emotion or there's something wrong with you if you feel it, is that they're only paying attention to when people act poorly, right? So they feel the emotion and they act in ways that are not efficacious for keeping the relationship. They go nuts and it's very apparent. rather, you know, they might not. be catching all of the times that people are like, you know, she's riding bikes with this other person. Maybe I should try and spend more time with her or be nicer or effectively tell her that that other person sucks.

speaker-1: Right. Or give her first trade in ⁓ when we were doing sticker book sticker trading. Yeah. Which I do believe that I did. I think that my my friendship jealousy prompted me to be magnanimous in my ⁓ in my choice of like who gets to go first when sticker trades. We used to trade stickers on the corner. Like yeah, it was really it was really sweet. Growing up in ⁓ small town rural Wisconsin has its benefits.

speaker-0: I did that in in ⁓ outside Philly. ⁓ I remember the oily stickers where you press them and they

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So is ⁓ so th there is h healthy, like like friendship jealousy can be really healthy then. Like I mean like a healthy ingredient.

speaker-0: Yeah, I mean it so it alerts you to concern that somebody you like might be replacing you with somebody else. That is not only a valuable thing to know so that you can protect the relationship, but it also tells you, hey, you value this person. You can act in ways that are positive once you realize and recognize that emotion and aren't ashamed of it, right? ⁓ I think we get a lot of shame for friendship jealousy when it's pretty normal.

speaker-1: Yeah. Now I want to talk to you about another one of your recent papers, and this one has a title that I love, Sometimes We Want Vicious Friends. I love that. So what does that mean? And what does it tell us about what friendship is actually for? Yeah.

speaker-0: So ⁓ basically in a lot of past research, people have explored friend preferences, so what it is that we want in friends. ⁓ And they've done this as as most relationships work has by only thinking that friendship ⁓ is a two person relationship. When one of the things that my lab emphasizes is the fact that these dyadic friendships exist. In wider and densely interconnected social worlds, where my friend has interactions with and relationships with other people, which can affect my friend, my friendship, and can have potentially profound effects on me and my outcomes through that, right? so if my friend only ever interacted with me, then I'd want my friend to be maximally kind and minimally vicious. And that's what past work finds. We want kind friends, we avoid vicious friends, of course. ⁓ The problem is our friends interact with people who aren't us. And so we want our friends to be kind to us and kinder to us than to other people. And sometimes we want our friends to be more vicious than they are kind when they're directing that behavior toward people who want to hurt us, toward our enemies. So yes, sometimes we want vicious friends because our friends interact with people that aren't just people who are nice to us. ⁓ and I I think part of one implication is that evaluative concepts are indexed to the self, which just means that when I say Sarah is nice, I mean Sarah is nice to me. ⁓ or when I say I want a friend who is generous, I want a friend who is generous to me. Right. and another thing that it says is that our friends are for helping us. part of what our friends should do in our minds is defend us against our enemies.

speaker-1: I love it. I love it. I'm like, I'm wondering and it it this kind of ⁓ I wanna talk now about the Center for Friendship. All right. So you built this entire research center dedicated to the study of friendship, which I mean is about damn time because as we noted, I mean it's such an these are such important relationships. And especially like, I don't know if you've ⁓ seen the statistics, but like people aren't marrying and pair bonding the way that they used to. And ⁓ and so I think that it's becoming even more important that we develop and and really are intentional in developing and maintaining friendships. Absolutely. ⁓ and so I'm so glad that you are putting together ⁓ and have been part of putting together the ⁓ the center for the center for studying friendship over at UCLA. And I wanna know like what If you had a magic wand and were able to just like ping, here's like something about friendship that we would know based on, you know, research. Like what do you think is the most the thing that we need an answer to most urgently in the research area?

speaker-0: Need an answer to

speaker-1: Yeah, like like what do you like what do you wish we knew about friendship that we don't currently know? Like what's one of the most important insights that we just need to understand in order to open up like our our understanding of how to build and maintain and you know develop our friendships?

speaker-0: Okay. I can't say just one, I have to say two 'cause Okay. Yeah. ⁓ how do we make friends? We can't tell people how to make friends right now.

speaker-1: Right. We already decided it was it was join a club. Yeah.

speaker-0: So how do people make friends? And the second one is what is it about it it's not just COVID that has destroyed people's friendships. In nineteen ninety, three percent of people reported having zero friends. Today that number is twelve percent. That number is twenty percent for single men in the US. So one in six people in the world report being lonely, according to the World World Health Organization. And given those health benefits of friendship and the health costs of loneliness, the World Health Organization estimates that a hundred people die per hour related to loneliness, from issues related to loneliness. So I would want to know what is it that started before COVID and hasn't really rebounded since that is causing these relationships to not be formed and to fracture. So

speaker-1: Do do you think it's do you think 'cause it like of course my brain is like, ⁓ yeah, well it's the internet, it's social media, right? Like it's our smartphones. ⁓ because that's it like a a really easy scapegoat for any problem that we have. And so I'm wondering, do you think that's it?

speaker-0: I think part of it is the increased mobility, ⁓ the decreased time that people have. So particularly ⁓ the gig economy. So we do see that ⁓ people who have only a high school education have been hit harder by the friendship recession than people with a college degree. ⁓ perhaps because they have to work more time to make ends meet. Maybe. ⁓ so there is that. There's the idea that if I meet all of these people, I'll only become friends with somebody who is perfect for me. so there's that. But yeah, I mean, in my head, I absolutely go not just to social media, but to media in general. The proliferation of personalized media, I think, has fractured our world to such an extent. that it is harder to have somebody that does have that neurosynchrony, that does experience the world the same as you, because people can have so many more different experiences. We're not all watching Seinfeld anymore. You know, it it's it's difficult.

speaker-1: It I I I've talked about that issue as well. I feel like there's no shared reality. There's no shared messaging. It's like I feel like you know, when I was ⁓ in a girl, like a young girl and went to Sunday school, ⁓ when my family would go to church and we hear the stories about the Tower of Babel and like everybody speaking a different language and so nobody can communicate and so society falls apart. ⁓ and I kind of feel like we're there right now because I feel like everybody has a shared ⁓ like like instead of having shared reality and shared, you know, things that we can communicate on, everybody's got these little micro environments that they themselves are, you know, the only person who's privy to because it's their algorithm. And so none of us are speaking the same language. And so there's no coordinated effort. Like we can't, you know, and I think we saw this with with COVID. It was like there was such lack of coordinated effort, and part of it was you know, the government issues, but ⁓ but it's like there's no nobody has shared reality. And then when there's no shared reality, there's no trust and and those two things work together. And then it creates kind of a perfect storm where it's really difficult to have coordinated action. And as you noted, it's really difficult to have friendship because your your worldview is totally different because you have this whole other reality that's being fed to you by your smartphone than somebody else. And so you like get together and it's like, You know, you're it's it's like almost like clash of the cultures, even though you're from the same place. Yeah.

speaker-0: It decreases the size of the set of people you could have that chemistry with. ⁓ and this is honestly not just a health problem or a public health problem and that we talked about in that paper. I mean, I think this crisis is an existential threat. It's a civic problem. ⁓ when you aren't friends with people, it decreases interpersonal trust. That decreases civic participation, like volunteering and voting. It increases extremism, authoritarianism. The Department of Homeland Security even mentions lack of friends and loneliness as a risk factor for domestic terrorism. So this is an existential threat that we need to solve to understand how people make friends and why they aren't right now.

speaker-1: These are like such important topics. I mean, I'm so glad that you're doing the work that you're doing. And so I want to close by asking you a couple of questions for people who are listening who are looking to improve the quality of their friendships, just improve friendships in general. And to start with, I just want to know like if somebody wants better friendships, so I'm you know, we've got a lot of listeners who are looking to have better friends, like they feel like they've got people that they know and acquaintances, but really not feeling like they have the village, right, that they want. ⁓ what should people do differently if they're looking to really develop better friendships?

speaker-0: ⁓ so I would look at the friends you have and see what it is that you love about them. ⁓ try to have that gratitude for the friends that you do have. One of the things that people could do is look at the friends they used to have as well. Is there a person that you know that you want to reconnect with? ⁓ and yes, you might feel just as anxious, and the data suggests people feel just as anxious at recontacting an old friend as they would at trying to contact a stranger, but The data also suggests that a little bit of practice for that phone call, interaction, text message can lower the anxiety that you feel. So you can reconnect with an old friend that you admire and want to know. and the the other thing I would say is that we exist in a world where our minds have misperceptions a lot of the time, right? ⁓ so One of the things that we often get wrong is how happy other people would be to talk to us, to hear from us, to do us a favor. And so realizing that in our heads we might be so concerned to burden somebody when just, you know, put yourself in that person's shoes and realize how delighted you would be if you could help that friend. So I I would say be a little bit brave. That's that's the thing, be a little bit brave.

speaker-1: I love that. I think that's great advice that translates in just about any domain. I think that I was I was talking to a friend of mine and I think bravery and and a little bit of audacity just really goes it goes a long way. Fortunately it goes a long way. Yeah. What is what is one mistake or are there any mistakes that you see people making within friendships or that's, you know, as they're trying to make friends that that is setting them back?

speaker-0: Mm.

speaker-1: in terms of their ability to connect with others.

speaker-0: So I I don't know if I would call this necessarily a mistake, but I think we have pretty crazy ideals sometimes or deal breakers. ⁓ so I think it's 37% of Gen Z Democrats would refuse to even consider befriending a Republican. ⁓ and maybe five percent of Republicans. I think those are the numbers. Wow. ⁓ so maybe, you know, relax a little bit. I don't know, take a trazodone.

speaker-1: I I I love I love I love your answer 'cause one of the things I was going to ask you and I I didn't get to was whether, you know, we hear this a lot with romantic partners where you hear that somebody's just like too picky. Mm-hmm. And I was gonna and I was gonna ask you that. Like and it sounds like your answer to that, like are c is it possible that people might just be being too picky? ⁓ it sounds to me like your answer to that might be yes. Is that am I reading that right? I think that's

speaker-0: I think it's a possibility. ⁓ so I I just put in a grant to hopefully do some work that suggests that the abundance and freedom of choice actually does make people pickier. And I think we hear this all the time in romance. So yeah, I I would imagine that it happens in friendships too, and there is such a greater ease of moving in and out of friendships and meeting new people. ⁓ the the value of any one friend or the replaceability of any person increases. And so it's easier not to befriend them or to get rid of that friendship when maybe it shouldn't be.

speaker-1: And what is if somebody's like looking at their friends and thinking through their the friendships that they have, like what is a red flag that somebody just might not be a really good friend? Like what are some of the things like where we should say, like, you know what? It's it's time. It's time to call it with this person. Yeah.

speaker-0: I mean, there are only so many times you can reach out if you don't get contact back. So non contact I think is a really good cue. Granted, ⁓ I just encountered a fucking crazy line crazy lady that non contact just made it worse. ⁓ so hm. but unless, you know, the person's nuts. Non contact a red flag. ⁓ or maybe just a cue that they don't value you as much as you value them. And that is not the recipe for a great friendship. when people talk about what matters in friendships, they talk about a lot of different things, but trust seems to be core. And so somebody that has broken your trust, that's probably that would be the biggest red flag to me that this relationship should not continue. I mean, you don't want to have to spend your time censoring what you say to this person because you're afraid they're gonna say it to somebody else. ⁓ again, that's a problem that I had in my youth that I don't have now. ⁓

speaker-1: Yeah, I think that it's it's so interesting and I th and in and and I think that w what you said about in youth, we're trying to in the evolutionary world, we would say it this way. We would say that you're solving a lot of really important adaptive problems all at the same time. Yeah. Right. You're looking for a romantic partner, you're trying to ascend the status hierarchy, you're trying to, you know, establish yourself in this way and that way. And I think it does create a lot of competition. And in in comp competitive environments you tend to see that people ⁓ aren't like they value other people less than they value themselves. ⁓ and then once we kind of get a little bit older and you know, and and as to have some of those adaptive challenges solved, then it allows us to think outside of ourselves a little bit better. and so I think that I think that's an element, ⁓ I think that's an element to that. Yeah.

speaker-0: I agree with you absolutely.

speaker-1: Yeah, so I wanna cl I will close ⁓ by my I guess my last question is ⁓ you know, we talked a lot about what people can do to, you know, make friends and find friends and and I guess like what ⁓ what can we do to be a good friend? Like what like like if we could do w one thing, so everybody who's listening ⁓ wants to deepen their friendships, like like what is one thing that we can do for our friends that really ⁓ can help to either, you know, just deepen that relationship or even just like let our friend know how much we appreciate them. Yeah.

speaker-0: And so this is the the sort of two-pronged thing. Be brave and be honest. So actually reach out and ask people how you how are you doing. ⁓ Put something on the calendar for real. Don't just say, hey, I want to see you. That's never gonna happen. Be be brave and honest with yourself. ⁓ but also be honest with your friend. When they ask how you're doing, you don't have to say fine. You can say, ⁓ well, professionally things are great and personally my life is a fucking trash fire. so you're you're allowed to say that and let people know you.

speaker-1: Ha ha. I love that. I think that's a perfect I think that's a perfect note to close on. So Dr. Jamie Crumbs, thank you so much for joining us on the XX Lab. And ⁓ yeah, it was just such a pleasure to have you on. Thank you.

speaker-0: so much for having me. I loved it. Thank you.

speaker-1: And that's it for today's episode of the XX Lab. If you want more, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're enjoying the show, a rating or review helps other people find it. See you next episode.