Having a best friend is the best thing in life. Unfortunately, getting older, it's even harder to find a true friend. Sometimes, there are people we have considered as friends but they are secretly making us hurt. Then, how best to get a best friend?
According to a study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, time is everything. The longer we spend time with someone, the more likely we are to develop closer ties.
As quoted from page The Independent, Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication at the University of Kansas, has done research on friendship. Hall examines the work of evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, who claims there's a layer of friendship, and a limit to how deeply the brain can manage it.
He claims, most people classify friendships in four categories: acquaintances, common friends, friends, and good friends. He also theorized, the majority of us closest to only five people. In addition, we only consider about 15 people as good friends. He also found that the brain is only capable of managing about 150 relationships.
The research he did with two separate studies to examine these layers further, especially regarding the time spent together, and its relationship to proximity. In his first research, he conducted a survey of 355 adults who had recently moved into a new area, and asked them to identify someone they had met there, without any interest in fostering romance.
Each participant should then reveal how they met this person, and how much time they spent together. Then they are asked to classify the friendship level achieved after a longer period of time with a scale ranging from acquaintance to the best friend.
In his next research, Hall asked 112 first year students at the University of Kansas to name two new people they met, and conduct their survey for nine weeks, to see how their relationship developed.
After doing a careful analysis, Hall found, it takes about 200 hours to reach the best friend status. In the meantime, it takes 50 hours to move from acquaintance to regular friend, and 90 hours to grow from a friend to a friend.
However, he added, this does not mean we are guaranteed to be best friends with someone, even if they have spent 200 hours with them. Therefore, the quality of time spent together is also very important.
"When we spend time with joking, having meaningful conversations, relating to each other, all these types of communication events contribute to the development of friendlies faster," Hall said. One of the best ways to start a friendship is to ask how the days passed by that person, for example.
The opposite effect can be seen among co-workers, who may have spent more than 200 hours of shared thresholds, and remain interacting with each other. Usually, when in the office, we will only greet someone with a basic greeting like 'hey' or 'hello'.
According to Hall, this very basic level of interaction will rarely lead to a close friendship, regardless of the hours spent together. This may be because we do not like this person, so the secret to having lasting friendships may not be praising each other, nor will they just meet for a long time.
"You have to invest. It's clear that many adults do not feel that they have a lot of time, but this relationship will not grow just by wanting it."
"You have to make time with people," Hall said.
According to a study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, time is everything. The longer we spend time with someone, the more likely we are to develop closer ties.
As quoted from page The Independent, Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication at the University of Kansas, has done research on friendship. Hall examines the work of evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, who claims there's a layer of friendship, and a limit to how deeply the brain can manage it.
He claims, most people classify friendships in four categories: acquaintances, common friends, friends, and good friends. He also theorized, the majority of us closest to only five people. In addition, we only consider about 15 people as good friends. He also found that the brain is only capable of managing about 150 relationships.
The research he did with two separate studies to examine these layers further, especially regarding the time spent together, and its relationship to proximity. In his first research, he conducted a survey of 355 adults who had recently moved into a new area, and asked them to identify someone they had met there, without any interest in fostering romance.
Each participant should then reveal how they met this person, and how much time they spent together. Then they are asked to classify the friendship level achieved after a longer period of time with a scale ranging from acquaintance to the best friend.
In his next research, Hall asked 112 first year students at the University of Kansas to name two new people they met, and conduct their survey for nine weeks, to see how their relationship developed.
After doing a careful analysis, Hall found, it takes about 200 hours to reach the best friend status. In the meantime, it takes 50 hours to move from acquaintance to regular friend, and 90 hours to grow from a friend to a friend.
However, he added, this does not mean we are guaranteed to be best friends with someone, even if they have spent 200 hours with them. Therefore, the quality of time spent together is also very important.
"When we spend time with joking, having meaningful conversations, relating to each other, all these types of communication events contribute to the development of friendlies faster," Hall said. One of the best ways to start a friendship is to ask how the days passed by that person, for example.
The opposite effect can be seen among co-workers, who may have spent more than 200 hours of shared thresholds, and remain interacting with each other. Usually, when in the office, we will only greet someone with a basic greeting like 'hey' or 'hello'.
According to Hall, this very basic level of interaction will rarely lead to a close friendship, regardless of the hours spent together. This may be because we do not like this person, so the secret to having lasting friendships may not be praising each other, nor will they just meet for a long time.
"You have to invest. It's clear that many adults do not feel that they have a lot of time, but this relationship will not grow just by wanting it."
"You have to make time with people," Hall said.
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