Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [9]
One of the most ambitious studies of modern friendships looked at 10,000 Brits, both males and females, in 2003. According to the study the average number of friends a person had in the United Kingdom was thirty-three, the “magic number.” Two years later, that number increased to fifty-four friends (the increase attributed to the way technology has enhanced communications). But only one-sixth of them, about nine people on average, are considered close friends who make it to the “inner sanctum” as opposed to social (casual) ones. Although those surveyed ranked their friendships as the most important thing in their life—above money, career, and even family—people generally only stay in contact with one out of twelve of the average number of 396 friends they make in a lifetime.
Ironically, both women and men tend to see social (or casual) friends more often than the people they think of as their closest friends. On average, women see their social friends every 3.5 days while men see their social friends every 5 days; both sexes see their close friends once every eight weeks, only six times a year.
There are some noteworthy gender differences. Men typically have 20% more friends than women and their friendships are marginally longer-lasting (32% of men compared to 27% of women have known their close friends for more than twenty years), but men tend to have fewer close friends. Also, women are twice as likely as men (10% vs. 5%) to only have friends of the same sex.
Nearly three-quarters of the 1,500 women who responded to the Fractured Friendship survey have between two and five very close or best friends. One in ten say they have only one best friend, and another one in ten say they have six to ten very close or best friends. Women who admit to having no best friends say that it isn’t out of choice, and they still hope to find one or more.
Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, pointed out that when it comes to “friendships of good” (philosopher talk for our concept of best friends) there are limits to the number of relationships that can be juggled simultaneously. Aristotle was writing about friendship more than two thousand years ago, but the same is obviously true today. No doubt, the exact number of manageable relationships varies from person to person. Recently, a daily poll of Facebook users asked both sexes the question: How many best friends do you have? Women are more likely than men to have just one best friend; they are almost half as likely to have ten or more best friends than men; and are about half as likely as men to have no best friends. These quick and dirty findings suggest that women favor a smaller, more intimate circle of friends than men.
A study in the 1990s at Liverpool University found that most people have about five close friends and an extended network of 150 people they consider more distant acquaintances, which is somewhat consistent with other surveys. Around the same time, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied social groups of non-human primates to estimate the number of social connections that a human being could handle at one time. Dubbed “Dunbar’s Number” (which was popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point), 150 is the maximum number of friends, casual and close, that Dunbar concluded humans are functionally hardwired to handle at the same time, the number limited by the volume of the neocortex of the brain.
Friendship Numerology: More Art than Science
Some of the soft conclusions that can be drawn from friendship research include:
• People have only a small circle of best friends relative to good (close) ones and casual ones (as illustrated in the pyramid).
• While there is wide variability among different women, most women have between two and five very close or best friends.
• Women tend to favor a smaller, more intimate circle of friends than men.
• The friends women see most frequently are often not the people they think of as their closest friends.
• Most people think they have fewer friends than their friends have.
Compared to male friendships,