Abstract
Friendship constitutes a human universal, with people across different times and places forming friendly relationships. Yet, people are selective in whom they befriend. The current research aimed to identify friendship preferences, that is, the traits that people find desirable or undesirable in a friend. More specifically, Study 1 employed open-ended questionnaires and identified 50 traits that participants preferred their friends to have, and 43 traits that they preferred their friends not to have. Study 2 employed a sample of 706 Greek-speaking participants and classified desirable traits into 10 broader factors; the most important one was being honest, followed by being ethical, pleasant, and available. Study 3 employed a sample of 865 Greek-speaking participants and classified undesirable traits into three broader factors. The most undesirable one was being dishonest, followed by being competitive and being impatient. In both studies, women tended to give higher scores than men. In addition, significant age effects were found for most factors in both studies.
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All authors (Menelaos Apostolou and Panagiota Vetsa) contributed to the conception and design of the study as well as to material preparation, data collection, and analysis. The manuscript was written by Menelaos Apostolou. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Apostolou, M., Vetsa, P. Friendship Preferences: Examining Desirable and Undesirable Traits in a Friend. Evolutionary Psychological Science 9, 38–49 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-022-00329-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-022-00329-w