One possible reason why people might have different perceptions of friendships could be related to gender differences. I want to acknowledge that there are genders that exist outside of just men and women, however, for the scope of this project the research that I have focuses on men and women. Early research conducted by Marjorie and Harold Richey on the significance of best friend relationships in adolescence shows that female relationships are “more intense, demonstrative, and exclusive” than male friendships tend to be. This study used 160 college age students and questionnaire methodology. The study also found that females process their mutual experiences differently than men do. For example females try to understand and compare themselves to others while men tend to have relationships based on similarity an attitude instead of experiences. This is personally relevant to me because one of the friends that sparked this project is a male friend of mine and it was clear that we were just having two different understandings of our friendship.

Further research published in the royal society open science journal shows that men and women make different social investments such that girls are more likely to make decisions based on future romantic partners. In addition this work shows that sex differences in social focus continue throughout the lifespan such that around age 25 males are more connected than females but that begins to switch around age 39 and later. More specifically when women begin to have children in their late 30s and then those children reach adulthood their social focus switches back to themselves as a post to raising children. I thought that this was important to include because it shows that life changes can affect men and women differently and affect their social relationships differently as well. I think that it makes a big difference to acknowledge gender because it definitely changes the way that we perceive the world around us at least to some small degree.

While I was doing research, I was really interested in the idea of sex differences in terms of friendship because of all the rumors that boys and girls cannot be friends. I want to know how men and women think differently about friendships in order to understand a little bit more about where that rumor came from. While my research did not reveal much information about that, it did show me some of the ways in which men and women differ and how they feel about their social connections. There’s only confirmed what I already suspected, which is that Friendships between men are not terribly different from friendships between women. At the very least I think that Rawlins’ three expectations of a friendship can still be applicable for both men and women.