Study Shows Half Of The People You Consider Friends Don't Consider You A Friend

May 08, 2019 by apost team

What qualifies someone to be considered your friend? We all have acquaintances and coworkers, but what is that extra something that makes you call someone your actual friend? Deciphering who is a true friend may be harder and more complex than you think.

And after reading this new study, you may want to reconsider which people you actually call your friends.

The study was conducted by MIT Media Lab and was later published in PLOS One. Researchers from the study used ratings to analyze friendships between individuals. The study findings were taken from 84 undergraduate students.

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The undergraduates were asked to rate their classmates from a scale of 0-5, with 0 meaning that they didn’t know the person, 3 meaning they were friends, and 5 meaning they were best friends.

In a dramatic twist, they were also asked to guess how their classmates would rate them. Surprisingly enough, they found that many of the ratings were not reciprocal through both participants.

Although people believed that those they rated as friends would score them as their friend as well, 50% of the time, the responses did not match! There are quite a few reasons why these results could have been displayed from the undergraduate students.

For one, it may have a lot to do with social standing. For instance, those who are more popular may not want to admit they are friends with someone while others may want to emphasize their relationships with those of higher social standings.

Whatever the case may be, you may want to be more picky about dubbing the people you know as your friends. This title clearly means a lot more than we thought it did and the nature of friendships is more complex than previously believed.

What do you think about these results? How do you think you and your friends would score together on this scale? Let us know in the comments and pass this alogn to your friends and family to see what they think!