A new study by researchers at MIT analyzed friendships in 84 subjects aged 23 to 38 and found that about half of perceived friendships aren’t mutual.
That’s right, according to this study, about half of the people you think are your friends don’t actually like you like that.
In a study titled “Are You Your Friends’ Friend? Poor Perception of Friendship Ties Limits the Ability to Promote Behavioral Change.” co-author Alex Pentland explains that “people don’t like to hear that the people they think of as friends don’t name them as friends”.
According to the New York Times, “the study asked participants to rank one another on a five-point continuum of closeness from “I don’t know this person” to “One of my best friends.” The feelings were mutual 53 percent of the time while the expectation of reciprocity was pegged at 94 percent. This is consistent with data from several other friendship studies conducted over the past decade, encompassing more than 92,000 subjects, in which the reciprocity rates ranged from 34 percent to 53 percent.”
That friend you talk to all the time on-line, may not like you as much as you like them. That person who tells everyone how close the two of you are? Yeah, you barely even know them.
Part of the reason may be because it’s so difficult to even describe or define what friendship is. As Muhammad Ali said, “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”
Or maybe you’re just a jerk and people just pretend to be your friend because they want free Riot Fest tickets. Looking at you Riot Fest Twitter Person…
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