The Life Cycle of Friendship

Environmental Factors

Day-to-day contact is conducive to the formation of friendships. Five decades ago, a landmark study revealed that friendships are likely to develop when individuals come into contact with one another through residential proximity. Festinger, Schachter, and Back (1950) asked residents of a married students’ housing complex to name the three people in the complex with whom they socialized most. The person who lived next door was named most frequently, followed by the person who lived two doors down, and so on. These findings have been replicated in a number of residential settings including dormitories, condominium complexes, and naval bases.

The workplace is another avenue through which potential friends are brought into contact with one another. A large-scale survey of nearly 1,000 men found that the workplace was the most common source of friendships (26% of respondents’ friendships), followed [Page 72]by the neighborhood (23%) (Fischer et al., 1977). The role of the workplace in the formation of women's friendships is less clear. For women who have family responsibilities, the demands of combining paid work with domestic work might prohibit the cultivation of friendships in the workplace (Allan, 1989). For women who are not employed outside the home, the neighborhood can play the same role in friendship formation as the workplace does for men (Jerrome, 1984).

Finally, other friends and relatives are an important source of new friendships (Parks & Eggert, 1991). Thus, the seeds of friendship are sown when people are in physical proximity, although recent developments in computer-mediated communication (e.g., e-mail) are enabling people to form friendships in the absence of face-to-face contact (Lea & Spears, 1995).

Individual Factors

Although contact might be a necessary condition for the formation of friendships, it is not sufficient. For a friendship to develop, the potential friends must exhibit qualities such as physical attractiveness, social skills, and responsiveness. Physical attractiveness is weighed more heavily in attraction to romantic partners than to friends (Sprecher, 1998a). Nevertheless, looks do play a role in the formation of same- and other-sex friendships (Aboud & Mendelson, 1996) because people tend to assume similarity (e.g., in terms of personality or attitudes) between themselves and attractive people (Patzer, 1985).

...