Synonyms
Definition
Fair-weather friends are exploiters of true friendship who are interested in unilaterally receiving support. True friends (or close friends) not only receive support, they are also willing to provide support to each other in times of need.
Introduction
Friendship is a mutual support system between two non-kin individuals. Importantly, it is characterized by the provisioning of need-based support (Hruschka 2010; Silk 2003). Whereas a true friend is concerned about your welfare, happily helping you in times of need, a fair-weather friend is concerned only about his or her own welfare and thereby fails to help you when you need it most (Tooby and Cosmides 1996). Fair-weather friends are thus free-ridersin the sense that they exploit the demands implicit within the friendship contract. Many solutions have been proposed to this so-called free-rider problem, but the primary context in which they have been studied, namely, the iterated...
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Smith, A., Ohtsubo, Y. (2021). Fair-Weather Friends Versus True Friends. In: Shackelford, T.K., Weekes-Shackelford, V.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_1571
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