Friendship - Misplaced Pages

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Friendship is a relationship between two people who hold mutual affection for each other. Friendships and acquaintanceship are thought of as spanning across the same continuum. The study of friendship is included in the fields of sociology, social psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and zoology. Various academic theories of friendship have been proposed, including social exchange theory, equity theory, relational dialectics, and attachment styles.

The value of friendship is often the result of friends consistently demonstrating the following:

The tendency to desire what is best for the other
Sympathy and empathy
Honesty, even in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth
Mutual understanding and compassion; ability to go to each other for emotional support
Enjoyment of each other's company
Trust in one another
Positively strong, deep, close reciprocity, mutuality — equal give-and-take between the two parties
The ability to be oneself, express one's feelings and make mistakes without fear of judgement.

Cultural variations

The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this section, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new section, as appropriate. (April 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

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Ancient Greece

Friendship was a topic of moral philosophy which was greatly discussed by Plato, Aristotle, and Stoics. This was less discussed in the modern era, until the re-emergence of contextualist and feminist approaches to ethics. Openness in friendship was seen as an enlargement of the self; Aristotle wrote, "The excellent person is related to his friend in the same way as he is related to himself, since a friend is another self; and therefore, just as his own being is choiceworthy him, the friend's being is choice-worthy for him in the same or a similar way." In Ancient Greek, the same word was used for "friend" and "lover".

Islamic

In Islamic culture, friendship, also known as companionship, is taken seriously and numerous important attributes of a worthwhile friend have emerged in Islamic media. These include, for both men ("brothers") and women ("sisters"): The notion of a righteous (or "Saalih") person, who can appropriately delineate between that which is "good" and that which is "evil", has appeared prominently; concordance with the perspectives and knowledge of other Islamic companions is considered to be important; forgiveness regarding mistakes and loyalty between friends is emphasized; and, a "love for the sake of Allah" is considered to be a relationship of the highest significance between two humans.

The view of the Islamic culture is to keep the relationships between boys and girls to a minimum; on the other hand, however, the only opportunity for a prudent relationship between boys and girls is when they have a serious plan for marriage. Beyond the limits of the family and religious marriage (See Mahram), virtually all emotional, intimate and love relations are despicable and religiously unlawful or a path to pave the way towards great sins. In the past there had been a social acceptance relying the local and traditional criteria which could practically lead to timely marriage at the beginning of puberty; given the above, the main question is how it is possible to regulate the time gap which exists between puberty and the time of marriage, under the present circumstances where as a result of the expanded network of relationships, the society encounters reduced age of puberty and increased age of marriage. The theory of Islamic friendship seeks to seek feasibility of a regulated management of the period between puberty and the time of permanent marriage, and that upon the theory of Islamic friendship.

Asia

In Central Asia, male friendships tend to be reserved and respectful in nature. They may use nicknames and diminutive forms of their first names.

Near East-Middle East

It is believed that in some parts of the Near East-Middle East, friendship has been described as more demanding when compared with other cultures; friends are people who respect each other, regardless of shortcomings, and who will make personal sacrifices in order to assist another friend, without considering the experience an imposition.

Many Arabian people perceive friendship in serious terms, and will deeply consider personal attributes such as social influence and the nature of a person's character before engaging in such a relationship.

Germany

Germans typically have relatively few friends, although friendships that do develop typically last a lifetime, as loyalty is held in high regard. Germans may appear aloof to people from other countries, as they tend to be cautious and keep their distance when it comes to meeting new people.

Russia

In Russia, one typically accords very few people the status of "friend". These friendships, however, make up in intensity what they lack in number. Friends are entitled to call each other by their first names alone and to use diminutives. A norm of polite behavior is addressing acquaintances by full first name plus patronymic. Acquaintances could include relationships that elsewhere would be qualified as real friendships, such as long-standing workplace relationships, or neighbors with whom one shares an occasional meal or a customary drink.

United States

Americans also use the term “friend” very freely, referring to someone they have known for a few weeks as a friend, perhaps for lack of a term for someone who is more than an acquaintance but less than a friend (Copeland, 2001). The rise of social networking websites, initially with friendster, followed by others like myspace and facebook, which popularized the concept of "Friend requests", also diluted the traditional meaning of "friend" due to the casual way that many users accept friend requests from people who they have met only once or none at all, whom, once the request is accepted, goes into the first person's "friend list". In the contemporary social media world, "friend" is used in a very casual, low-relationship threshold, manner.

Decline of friendships in the U.S.

According to a study documented in the June 2006 issue of the journal American Sociological Review, Americans are thought to be suffering a loss in the quality and quantity of close friendships since at least 1985. The study states that 25% of Americans have no close confidants and that the average total number of confidants per person has dropped from four to two.

According to the study:

The percentage of Americans who had at least one confidant not connected to them through kinship dropped from 80% to 57%.
Americans' dependence for close contact on a partner or spouse went up from 5% to 9%.
Research has found a link between fewer friendships (especially in quality) and psychological regression.

In recent times, it is suggested that modern American friendships have lost the force and importance they had in antiquity. C.S. Lewis, for example, in his The Four Loves, writes:

To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it. We admit of course that besides a wife and family a man needs a few 'friends'. But the very tone of the admission, and the sort of acquaintanceships which those who make it would describe as 'friendships', show clearly that what they are talking about has very little to do with that Philía which Aristotle classified among the virtues or that Amicitia on which Cicero wrote a book.

Likewise, Paul Halsall claims that:

The intense emotional and affective relationships described in the past as "non-sexual" cannot be said to exist today: modern heterosexual men can be buddies, but unless drunk they cannot touch each other, or regularly sleep together. They cannot affirm that an emotional affective relationship with another man is the centrally important relationship in their lives. It is not going too far, is it, to claim that friendship – if used to translate Greek philia or Latin amicitia – hardly exists among heterosexual men in modern Western society.

Mark McLelland, writing in the Western Buddhist Review under his Buddhist name of Dharmachari Jñanavira (Article), more directly points to homophobia being at the root of a modern decline in the western tradition of friendship.

Hence, in a cultural context where homosexual desire has for centuries been considered sinful, unnatural and a great evil, the experience of homoerotic desire can be very traumatic for some individuals and severely limit the potential for same-sex friendship. The Danish sociologist Henning Bech, for instance, writes of the anxiety which often accompanies developing intimacy between male friends:

The more one has to assure oneself that one's relationship with another man is not homosexual, the more conscious one becomes that it might be, and the more necessary it becomes to protect oneself against it. The result is that friendship gradually becomes impossible.

Their opinion that fear of being, or being seen as, homosexual has killed off western man's ability to form close friendships with other men is shared by Japanese psychologist Doi Takeo, who claims that male friendships in American society are fraught with homosexual anxiety and thus homophobia is a limiting factor stopping men from establishing deep friendships with other men. The suggestion that friendship contains an ineluctable element of erotic desire is not new, but has been advanced by students of friendship ever since the time of the ancient Greeks, where it comes up in the writings of Plato. More recently, the Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger claimed that:

There is no friendship between men that has not an element of sexuality in it, however little accentuated it may be in the nature of the friendship, and however painful the idea of the sexual element would be. But it is enough to remember that there can be no friendship unless there has been some attraction to draw the men together. Much of the affection, protection, and nepotism between men is due to the presence of unsuspected sexual compatibility. (Sex and Character, 1903)

Recent western scholarship in gender theory and feminism concurs, as reflected in the writings of Eve Sedgwick in her The Epistemology of the Closet, and Jonathan Dollimore in his Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault.

Divorce also contributes to the decline in friendship among Americans. “In international comparisons, the divorce rate in the United States is higher than that of 34 other countries including the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia (Newman & Newman, 2012 pg. 475).” With the divorce rate being so high, many couples end up losing friends through the process. This is because certain friends side with one member of the relationship and therefore lose the other friend.

Friendship and Technology: Another reason for the decline in friendships in the U.S. is due to technology. Ethan J. Leib, author of the book Friend vs. Friend and law professor at the University of California-Hastings suggests that longer hours of work and a large amount of online communication such as e-mail and excel take away from personal communication and thus make it much harder to form friendships even in the work place. Other aspects of technology including Facebook and Twitter also decrease the amount of personal communication in everyday life. These technological advances make it hard to feel emotionally connected to a friend (Newman & Newman) (Berry, 2012) (Freeman, 2011).

Developmental issues

In the sequence of the emotional development of the individual, friendships come after parental bonding and before the pair bonding engaged in at the approach of maturity. In the intervening period between the end of early childhood and the onset of full adulthood, friendships are often the most important relationships in the emotional life of the adolescent and are often more intense than relationships later in life. However, making friends seems to trouble a lot of people; having no friends can be emotionally damaging in some cases.

A study by researchers from Purdue University found that post-secondary-education friendships (e.g., college, university) last longer than the friendships before it.

Children with disorders such as High-functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome usually have some difficulty forming friendships. This is due to the autistic nature of some of their symptoms, which include, but are not limited to, preferring routine actions to change, obsessive interests and rituals, and usually lacking good social skills. This does not mean that they are not able to form friendships, however. With time, moderation, and proper instruction, they are able to form friendships after realizing their own strengths and weaknesses. Children with ADHD may not have difficulty forming friendships, but they may have a hard time keeping friendships because of impulsive behaviour and hyperactivity. Children with inattentive ADD may not have as much trouble keeping and maintaining friendships, but inattentiveness may make it more difficult. Children with conditions such as Asperger's syndrome may find it easier to form a strong friendship with a child who has a condition such as ADHD due to similar interests and behaviours..

Friendship Quality

(Berndt, 2002). -Children prize friendships that are high in prosocial behavior, intimacy, and other positive features. -Children are troubled by friendships that are high in conflicts, dominance, rivalry, and other negative features. -Friendships are high in quality when they have high levels of positive features and low levels of negative features. -High-quality friendships have often been assumed to have positive effects on many aspects of children’s social development. -The direct effects of friendship quality appear to be quite specific. -Having friendships high in positive features enhances children’s success in the social world of peers, but it apparently does not affect children’s general self-esteem. These findings are surprising because numerous studies with adults suggest that friendships and other supportive relationships enhance many aspects of adults’ physical and mental health, including their self-esteem -High-quality friendships may also have indirect effects on children’s social development. Most theories of social influence include some form of the hypothesis that children are more strongly influenced by their friends’ characteristics the higher the quality of those friendships.

Quality of Friendship

Friendship is “Life Enhancing” (Helm, 2012). By engaging in activities with friends, pleasure and happiness are intensified. The quality of friendships relates to happiness because friendship “provides a context where basic needs are satisfied” (Demir, 2010). By experiencing a good quality of friendship, the individual is led to feel more comfortable with who they are as a person. Ultimately, good quality friendships connect with the meaning of life satisfaction. Higher friendship quality directly contributes to self-esteem, self-confidence, and social development (Berndt, 2002).

Quality of Friendship: Two Dimensions

Friendship has two dimensions (Demir, 2007). The two dimension include: quality and conflict. The quality of friendship is important for a persons well being and it contributes to the closeness of friends. Within the quality of friendship, it is important to have healthy and interesting interaction. This type of interaction leads to a higher quality of friendship. The second dimension is conflict, which connects with the quality of friendships. High quality friendships have great ways of resolving conflict which ultimately leads to a stronger and healthier relationship.

Friendship development through childhood

At the early school age, friendships are based on the sharing of toys and objects and the enjoyment that is received from performing activities together. Friendships at this age are maintained through affection, sharing, and creative play time. Sharing is hard for children at this age level as they are very self-oriented. However, children are likely to share more with someone they consider to be a friend than with someone who is just a peer (Newman & Newman, 2012).

As a child moves from early school age to middle childhood, they face the developmental task of friendship. At this stage in life, children become less individualized and more aware of others. They begin to see their friends point of view and have fun playing in groups of peers who have the same interests as them. They also experience peer rejection as they move through the middle childhood years. It is important to teach a child that it is natural to sometimes be unaccepted by others but to remain positive about the friends they still have. Establishing good friendships at a young age helps a child to be better acclimated in society later on in their life (Newman & Newman, 2012).

In a 1974 study, Bigelow and La Gaipa, in one of the first studies conducted regarding children's friendships, found that expectations of a best friend become increasingly complex as a child gets older. The study investigated the criteria for "best friend" in a sample of 480 children between the ages of six and fourteen years of age.

Their findings highlighted three stages of the development of friendship expectations.

First stage: emphasised shared activities and the importance of geographical closeness.
Second stage: emphasised sharing, loyalty and commitment.
Third stage: revealed growing importance of similar attitudes, values and interests.

The Study of Friendships in Adolescent Development

(Crosnoe, R., & Needham, B., 2004)

Friendships in adolescent development include positive influences on how they act, feel, and think, and also problematic aspects including negative peer pressure. Which one is more prominent? To find out one needs to consider the characteristics of friends and how these friendships form. A study was conducted by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health where 9,234 American adolescents were examined to determine how their engagement in problem behavior (stealing, fighting, sexual activity, truancy) was related to the kinds of friends they had and to the peer networks and schools in which these friendships were located. Findings revealed that adolescents were less likely to engage in problem behavior when their friends did well in school, participated in school activities, avoided drinking and had good mental health. Also, these positive characteristics are greater when done together within the social group. How adolescents are affected by friendships could be shaped by their location in their group. For example, the one who is most central to their peer networks were the most influenced by their friends. Results also found that adolescents have less problematic behavior when they attended schools with similar characteristics to their friends (friends who did well at school at an academically rigorous school). Ones that engaged in more problem behavior resulted from friends with opposing characteristics to the school (friends who drank at an academically rigorous school). Thus, whether adolescents were influenced by their friends to engage in problem behavior depended on how much they were exposed to these friends and whether they and their friendship groups “fit in” at school.

Friendships in Adulthood

(Fowler) Just like adolescents, relationships with friends are important to older adults. Friends contribute to our satisfaction, give us a sense of belonging, competence, and self-worth. Friendship involves: - Enjoyment - spending time doing things together and sharing life experiences. - Trust — believing that our friends act on our behalf. - Respect and understanding — believing that our friends have the right to their own opinions. - Mutual assistance — helping and supporting our friends and having them help us. - Confiding — sharing confidential matters with our friends.

Types of Friendships Friends are people we know and trust, and who are special to us socially and emotionally. Friends are usually chosen among people who are considered the same as us. The people adults select as friends tend to be those who: - we have grown up with - have similar occupations - have children the same age - have similar interests - are the same general age and the same gender

The majority of adults have three or more close friends and more than half of adults have ten or more friends. Men and women have the same number of friends, however, women are likely to confide more in friendships than men. Men tend to enjoy activities or discuss and practice special skills. Adults also often make friends based on who their children are friends with. Many times, parents within a neighborhood are all friends because they are around each other so much because of their children. Parents will also often make friends with other parents on their children’s sports teams for the same reason. Not all adult acquaintances will end up in the friendship stage, however, it is likely that some will share commonalities and form a deeper relationship (Newman & Newman, 2012).

With life events such as marriage, parenthood, and accelerated career development, young adulthood merges into middle adulthood. Following marriage, both women and men report having fewer cross-gender friends. This may be due to suspicion and jealousy, and spouses spend most of their free time together rather than separately in social situations that might lead to cross-sex friendship formation. Also, when people marry they generally become more dependent on spouses and less so on friends for meeting social needs (Friendships, 2012).

Elderly

(Emotional and social development in late adulthood) - having friends is very important for the mental health among the elderly.

Functions of Elder Relationships Intimacy and companionship - mutual interests, belongingness, and ability to express feelings and confide in each other Acceptance - late-life friends shield one another from negative judgments about their capabilities and worth as a person while aging A link to the larger community - for elders who cannot go out as often, interactions with friends can keep them socially interactive Protection from the psychological consequences of loss - older adults in declining health who remain in contact with friends show improved psychological well-being.

Characteristics of Elder Relationships Older adults prefer familiar and established relationships over new ones, but friendship formation continues throughout life. With age, elders report that the friends they feel closest to are fewer in number and live in the same community. Elders tend to choose friends whose age, sex, race, ethnicity, and values are like their own. Compared with younger people, fewer report other-sex friendships. Older women have more secondary friends who are not intimates but with whom they spend time occasionally (group that meets for lunch, bridge, or museum tours). Through these associates, elders meet new people and gain in psychological well-being.

Types of friendships

Acquaintance: not a true friend—sharing of emotional ties is absent. An example would be a coworker with whom one enjoys eating lunch or having coffee, but would not look to for emotional support. Many "friends" that appear on social networking sites are generally acquaintances in real life.
Best friend (or close friend): A person someone shares extremely strong interpersonal ties with as a friend.
Blood brother or blood sister: Either people related by birth, or a circle of friends who swear loyalty by mixing the blood of each member together; the latter carries the risk of transmitting infections such as HIV.
Boston marriage: An antiquated American term used during the 19th and 20th centuries to denote two women who lived together in the same household independent of male support. Relationships were not necessarily sexual. It was used to quell fears of lesbians after World War I.
Bromance: a close non-sexual relationship between two (or more) men, a form of homosocial intimacy.
Buddy: In the USA, males and sometimes females often refer to each other as "buddies", for example, introducing a male friend as their "buddy", or a circle of male friends as "buddies". Buddies are also acquaintances that one has during certain events. The term may also refer to an online contact, such as the AOL Buddy List. It also refers to a close friend.
Casual relationship or "friends with benefits": A sexual or near-sexual, emotional relationship between two people who do not expect or demand to share a formal romantic relationship. This can also refer to a "hook-up".
Family friend: A friendship extended to family members of the friends. Close relation is developed in those societies where family ties are strong. This term is usually used in the Indian subcontinent.
Comrade: Means "ally", "friend", or "colleague" in a military or political connotation. This is the feeling of affinity that draws people together in time of war or when people have a mutual enemy or even a common goal. Friendship can be mistaken for comradeship. Former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges wrote:
We feel in wartime comradeship. We confuse this with friendship, with love. There are those, who will insist that the comradeship of war is love – the exotic glow that makes us in war feel as one people, one entity, is real, but this is part of war's intoxication. Friends are predetermined; friendship takes place between men and women who possess an intellectual and emotional affinity for each other. But comradeship – that ecstatic bliss that comes with belonging to the crowd in wartime – is within our reach. We can all have comrades.
As a war ends, or a common enemy recedes, many comrades return to being strangers who lack friendship and have little in common. Sometimes they even become enemies in another war.
Cross-sex friendship: A person having a friend of the opposite sex with having little or no sexual or romantic activity: a male who has a female friend, or a female who has a male friend. Historically, cross-sex friendships have been rare. This is because often men would labor in order to support themselves and their family, while women stayed at home and took care of the housework and children. The lack of contact led to men forming friendships exclusively with their colleagues and women forming friendships with other stay-at-home mothers. However, as women attended schools more and as their presence in the workplace increased, the segregated friendship dynamic was altered, and cross-sex friendships began to increase. Cross-sex friendship, once a sign of gender deviance, has been loosened because of the increase of gender equality in schools and the workplace, along with certain interests and pastimes such as sports. Cross-sex friendships are not always a socially accepted norm of amity, and some of those friendships could develop into romantic feelings (see romantic friendship). When these feelings are not mutual, they can often backfire, making it hard for the two to remain friends.
Frenemy: A portmanteau of the words fr(iend) and enemy, the term frenemy refers to someone who pretends to be a friend but actually is an enemy— a proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing in the world of friendships. This is also known as a love–hate relationship. Most people have encountered a frenemy at one time or another in the same places one might find friends —school, work, the neighborhood. The term frenemy was reportedly coined by a sister of author and journalist Jessica Mitford in 1977 and popularized more than twenty years later on the third season of Sex and the City. While most research on friendship and health has focused on the positive relationship between the two, a frenemy is a potential source of irritation and stress. One study by psychologist Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad found that unpredictable love–hate relationships characterized by ambivalence can lead to elevations in blood pressure. In a previous study, the same researcher found that blood pressure is higher around friends for whom one has mixed feelings than it is people whom one clearly dislikes.
Imaginary friend: a non-physical friend created by a child or even an adult. Sometimes they are human; other times, they are animals, such as the life-size rabbit in the 1950 Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey. Imaginary friends are also created for people desperate for social interaction but are isolated from contact with humans and pets. It may be seen as bad behavior or even taboo (some religious parents even consider their child to be possessed by an evil "spirit"), but is most commonly regarded as harmless, typical childhood behavior. The friend may or may not be human and commonly serves a protective purpose.
Internet relationship: a form of friendship or romance which takes place over the Internet. Some internet friendships evolve into real-life friendships. Internet friendships are in similar context to pen pals. These friendships are also based on the thought that they may never meet in real life, they know each other for who they are instead of the mask they may use in real life.
Mate: In the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, blokes often refer to each other as "mates", for example, introducing a male friend as their "mate", or a circle of male friends as "mates". In the UK, as well as Australia, this term has begun to be taken up by women as well as men.
Open relationship: a relationship, usually between two people, that agree each partner is free to have sexual intercourse with others outside the relationship. When this agreement is made between a married couple, it is called an "open marriage".
Communal friendship: a friendship in which the friends gather often to provide encouragement and emotional support in times of great need. This type of friendship tends to last only when opposing parties fulfill the expectations of support for the relationship.
Agentic friendship: a friendship in which both parties look toward each other for help in achieving practical goals in their personal and professional life. These friends help with completing projects, study for an exam, or help a friend move out. These types of friends value sharing time together, but only if there are no other priorities and the friend is actually available to help in the first place. Emotions and sharing of personal information is of no concern to this type of friend.
Pen pal: people who have a relationship via postal correspondence. Now pen pals have been established into internet friendships with the use of chat or social networking sites. They may or may not have met each other in person and may share either love, friendship, or simply an association between each other. This type of correspondence was encouraged in many elementary school children; it was thought that an outside source of information or a different person's experience would help the child become more worldly.

Friendship and health

The conventional wisdom is that good friendships enhance an individual's sense of happiness and overall well-being, but a number of solid studies support the notion that strong social supports improve a woman's prospects for good health and longevity. Conversely, it has been shown that loneliness and lack of social supports are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, viral infections, and cancer as well as higher mortality rates. Two researchers have even termed friendship networks a "behavioral vaccine" that protects both physical and mental health.

While there is an impressive body of research linking friendship and health status, the precise reasons for this connection are still far from clear. Most of the studies are large prospective studies (that follow people over a period of time), and while there may be a correlation between the two variables (friendship and health status), researchers still do not know if there is a cause-and-effect relationship, i.e., that good friendships actually improve health.

There are a number of theories that attempt to explain the link, including: 1) Good friends encourage their friends to lead more healthy lifestyles; 2) Good friends encourage their friends to seek help and access services when needed; 3) Good friends enhance their friends' coping skills in dealing with illness and other health problems; and/or 4) Good friends actually affect physiological pathways that are protective of health.

Pure love

Non-personal friendships

Although the term initially described relations between individuals, it is at times used for political purposes to describe relations between states or peoples (the "Franco–German friendship", for example), indicating in this case an affinity or mutuality of purpose between the two nations.

Regarding this aspect of international relations, Lord Palmerston said:

Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

This is often paraphrased as: "Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. Only permanent interests."

The word friendship can be used in political speeches as an emotive modifier. Friendship in international relationships often refers to the quality of historical, existing, or anticipated bilateral relationships.

Interspecies and animal friendship

See also: Ethology, Altruism in animals, and Sociobiology

Friendship as a type of interpersonal relationship is also found among animals of higher intelligence, such as the higher mammals and some birds. Cross-species friendships are common between humans and domestic animals. Less common but noteworthy are friendships between an animal and another animal of a different species, such as a dog and cat.

A study done by Krista McLennan, a PhD student at Northampton University, discovered a relationship between cows and their so-called "friends." McLennan measured the heart rates of the cattle on three separate occasions to determine their stress levels. In the first trial the cows were isolated from the rest of the herd. The second trial penned the animal with another cow that they were familiar with. Finally, the third trial put two random cows together. Her research showed that the cows were much more stressed when alone or with an unfamiliar cow than they were with one of their friends. This proves that cows are very social animals and are capable of forming close bonds with other cows in their herd. If farmers can group these friends together, it could create tremendous benefits. Reducing the stress levels of these cows improves their overall health and can even produce a greater milk yield.

Making a friend

Three significant factors make the formation of a friendship possible:

proximity, which means being near enough to see each other or do things together;
repeatedly encountering the person informally and without making special plans to see each other; and
opportunities to share ideas and personal feelings with each other.

Ending a friendship

Friendships end for many different reasons. Sometimes friends move away from each other and are forced to move on due to the distance. Sometimes divorce causes an end to friendships, as people drop one or both of the divorcing people. At a younger age friendships may end as a result of acceptance into new social groups. (Friendships, 2009) (Berry, 2012)

Friendships may end by fading quietly away or may end suddenly. How and whether to talk about the end of a friendship is a matter of etiquette that depends on the circumstances.

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Speech to the House of Commons, Hansard (March 1, 1848)
"Heifer so lonely: How cows have best friends and get stressed when they are separated". Mail Online. 5 July 2011. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
Williams, Alex (15 July 2012). "Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30?". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 July 2012.

External links

Media related to Friends at Wikimedia Commons
BBC Radio 4 series "In Our Time", on Friendship, 2 March 2006
Friendship at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
English translation of Cicero's On Friendship

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