Now in earlier sections of the website, I promised that there would be a dedicated piece on the idea of introverts and extroverts. This is another aspect of friendship that I have always been fascinated with because I think that personality really determines what the course of your friendships is like. Rawlins determined some characteristics that determine how easily you develop friends. According to him, independent people are those that make friends wherever they go and have more acquaintances as opposed to deep friendships because there’s a greater number of connections. This could be related to Dunbars number as well because it shows that humans might not have the mental capacity to make deep connections with overly large numbers of people.

The next type that Rawlins created was the idea of someone who is discerning, meaning they have a few close friends over the years but not as many acquaintances. This person is more selective with who they choose to be friends with and values deeper relationships over the more superficial casual friendships. I personally relate to this because I think that I would be in this category, however that is not necessarily a good thing because it seems that acquisitive people have the best friendship practices. Acquisitive people are those who stay in touch with old friends but continue to make new ones throughout their lifespan. These people are not firmly in the independent category or the discerning category but live somewhere comfortably in the middle. It is understandable to see how these people have the best friendship practices because life is constantly changing and it seems that these people are best equipped to adapt to those changes, however I do wonder how having a naturally introverted personality or naturally extroverted personality would play into this.

A study published in the Journal of Personality examined the role of introversion and extraversion on the dynamics that occurred between friends using a college-aged sample. The results showed that personality traits definitely have a pronounced impact on the friendship including in areas such as friendship boundaries, who does the talking, who does the listening, and which friend is more accommodating for the other. More specifically, the researchers found that both introverts and extraverts reinforced each other’s natural behavioral tendencies. This was interesting for me to learn about because it was the first time that I had seen evidence of personality playing out in real life. As I was reading this, I reflected on the composition of my own friend groups and realized that most of my friends are extroverted. I am personally about 70% introvert and 30% extroverted. I see that this plays out in the conversations that I have with other people, how often I feel like going out, and how other people perceive me as well.

Speaking of perceptions of others, one last thing worth mentioning here is a phenomenon actually discovered by a math teacher at Cornell University. This professor Steve Strogatz coined what he calls “the friendship paradox”. A journal published in the journal of psychological science explains that this friendship paradox is that it always seems like your friends have more friends than you do. As it turns out this might not actually be true, it might be due to something called “network extraversion bias” which is basically the idea that your friend group is a biased sample of people. It might feel like your friends have more friends because your friends are extroverts, who are likely to have more social connections just by nature.

This theory truly is common sense in my opinion. Who is more likely to use social media and benefit from the media multiplexity theory? Extroverts. Who is more likely to make friends on the first day in a new environment? Extroverts. Who is more likely to spend more time with other people? Extroverts Who is more likely to benefit from theories like the propinquity effect or communicate bond belong? You guessed it! Extroverts. So the next time you, or I, think to compare ourselves and our friendships to those around us, we should remember that our perception might not be aligned with reality, especially if we are not extroverts.