Wanna Be My BFF?
June 5, 2009 at 2:44 pm
In PSYC001, you were taught that you choose friends based on how cool, popular, and attractive they are. You learned that birds of a feather flock together, and thus similarity and proximity were super important factors when it came to picking your crew. Now the geniuses over at Penn have decided to go all Survivor on our ass. According to Robert Kurzban (an associate professor who teaches Human Sexuality):
Friendships are about alliances. We live in a world where conflict can arise and allies must be in position beforehand. In a way, one of the main predictors of friendship is the value of the alliance. The value of an ally, or friend, drops with every additional alliance they must make, so the best alliance is one in which your ally ranks you above everyone else as well.Deemed the Alliance Hypothesis for Human Friendship, this theory states that you like people because they like you. You want your friends to have your back. Well, duh. In a world where "Fave Fives" and "Top Friends" are commonplace, the whole friend-ranking thing seems pretty accurate, too.
Unrelated side note: The press release we received about this study mentioned that male dolphins have wingmen to help them score chicks. Who knew??