Factors in Friendship

Studies of interpersonal attraction and friendship have documented the
power of circumstances such as propinquity. In their 1950 book Social Pressures
in Informal Groups, Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, and Kurt Back reported
the friendship preferences of married students living in university
housing. Festinger and his colleagues found that the students and their families
were most likely to form friendships with others who lived nearby and
with whom they had regular contact. Propinquity was a more powerful determinant
of friendship than common background or academic major. Propinquity
appears to act as an initial filter in social relationships: Nearness
and contact determine the people an individual meets, after which other
factors may affect interpersonal attraction.
The findings of Festinger and his colleagues can be applied by judiciously choosing living quarters and location. People who wish to be popular
should choose to live where they will have the greatest amount of contact
with others: on the ground floor of a high-rise building, near an exit or stairwell,
or near common facilities such as a laundry room. Zajonc’s research on
the power of mere exposure confirms that merely having frequent contact
with others is sufficient to predispose them to liking.
Mere exposure does not appear to sustain relationships over time. Once
people have interacted, their likelihood of having future interactions depends
on factors such as physical attractiveness and similarity to one another.
Further, the quality of their communication must improve over time
as they engage in greater self-disclosure. As friends move from a tit-for-tat exchange
to a communal relationship in which they both invest time and resources,
their friendship will develop more strongly and satisfactorily.