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Elsevier

Evolution and Human Behavior

Volume 43, Issue 1, January 2022, Pages 44-52
Evolution and Human Behavior

Sex differences in friendship preferences

Author links open overlay panelKeelah E.G.Williams^aJaimie AronaKrems
^bJessica D.Ayers^cAshley M.Rankin^b
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2021.09.003Get rights and
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Abstract

Friendships can help us solve a number of challenges, increasing our
welfare and fitness. Across evolutionary time, some of the many
challenges that friendships helped to solve may have differed between
men and women. By considering the specific and potentially distinct
recurrent problems men's and women's friendships helped them solve,
we can derive predictions about the qualities that would have made
men's and women's same-sex friends ideal partners. This logic leads
to several predictions about the specific friend preferences that may
be differentially prized by men and women. Across three studies (N =
 745) with U.S. participants--assessing ideal hypothetical friends,
actual friends, and using a paradigm adapted from behavioral
economics--we find that men, compared to women, more highly value
same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status,
possess wealth, and afford access to potential mates. In contrast,
women, compared to men, more highly value friends who provide
emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information. Findings
suggest that the specific friendship qualities men and women
preferred differed by sex in ways consistent with a functional
account of friendship.

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Keywords

Friendship
Sex differences
Evolutionary psychology
Friend preferences
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