Culture, relational mobility, and friendship similarity

Background

Which individual-level and community-level factors influence friendship choices?

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Ample research on interpersonal attraction demonstrates that people like to be with others who are like them (Byrne, 1971). What was still up for debate, however, is whether friends are similar at the outset of a relationship (a selection account), or whether similarity grows over time as friends influence one another (a social influence account). In a large-scale field study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology  (Bahns, Crandall, Gillath, & Preacher, 2017), my colleagues and I found strong evidence for selection and surprisingly little evidence for social influence. Even so, selecting friends based on similarity is surely constrained by the number and variety of social choices as well as by cultural beliefs about relationship choice. Consequently, my colleagues and I have investigated how features of the social environment affect friendship choices, comparing friendships in big and small communities and in different cultural contexts. 

We are currently exploring whether ease of relationship entry and exit are separate components of relational mobility, each with a different effect on the importance of similarity in friendship. We expect that easy entry to new relationships, with ample opportunity to meet new people, invites people to be selective in choosing friends on the basis of similarity. By contrast, easy exit from existing relationships, with no fear of getting “stuck” in an unsatisfying relationship, may relax the pressure to be selective.