here<\/a>), from University of Pennsylvania, tests and confirms these tendencies, while trying to make sense of them. Participants in the experiments are asked to rank their closest friends in a number of ways. These \u00ab\u00a0friendship rankings\u00a0\u00bb turn out to be most strongly correlated with individuals’ own perceived rank among their partners’ other friends, more than for example, the benefits they receive from the friendship, the number of secrets shared or how long the friendship has been ongoing. I have a strong interest in ranking practices, but what\u00a0this mostly illuminates is what friendship means.<\/p>\nGood question. What is the definition of friendship \u2013 and what\u2019s so special about it? Friendship occurs among individuals who are not necessarily relatives nor mates, which rules out key explanations for cooperation such as kin selection. It also probably has to be a long-term relation, by contrast with task-dependent, opportunistic cooperation: \u00ab\u00a0can you be my friend of three minutes, just the time for us to move this table?\u00a0\u00bb seems to stretch the term a little\u2026.. Although non-sexual (or not primarily sexual), it is certainly dyadic\u00a0: X is the friend of Y, not the friend of a group or a couple\u00a0: not that these cases don\u2019t occur, but if X is friend of the pair (Y and Z) , then X is the friend of Y and the friend of Z.\u00a0 So what are these non-kin, non-sexual, long-term, dyadic relationships for\u00a0?<\/p>\n
DeScioli and Kurzban remind us that our animal friends (an expression which by the way raises another question\u00a0: is there friendship across-species\u00a0?) also engage in such \u00ab\u00a0friendship \u00bb\u00a0\u2013 although I am not sure that all their examples fit the above definition : hyenas use partners to gain access to carcasses, male dolphins employ partners to attain females for mating, juvenile rooks use partners to get food, and numerous primate species groom partners to garner agonistic support. Still, this doesn\u2019t exhaust the range of things we put behind human friendship\u00a0: we certainly share foods and drinks, offer presents, but we also share trivial stories, take interest in other people\u2019s friends\u2019 stories, spend lots of time to comfort them, and don\u2019t necessarily choose our friends for being the most \u00ab\u00a0useful\u00a0\u00bb ones. The question is\u00a0still what is human friendship for\u00a0?<\/p>\n
The function question makes sense for evolutionary psychologists, even though it would put off most of those who think that friendship is \u00ab\u00a0a value in itself\u00a0\u00bb. There is a long tradition of them \u2013 and many stories and legends also do their best to make it seem plausible that some human relationships might be devoid of any sexual or vital interest, and might not be concerned with any form of reciprocity other than that of feelings. This is yet another examples of the traditional misunderstanding between the evolutionary approach and more normative ones: you say it must have a function, we say it is a value.<\/p>\n
The way traditional evolutionary approaches explain human friendship certainly contributes to aggravate the conflict : the theory of reciprocal altruism see friends as\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0exchange partners, from whom gains in trade can be profitably extracted, provided that cheaters can be avoided.\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0 However, social psychology reveals some problems with the the trade theory. Contradicting a key prediction of reciprocity theories, people do not carefully monitor benefits given and received in close relationships. They also seem to help friends even when they are unlikely to be capable to repay.<\/p>\n
Friendship might be illuminated by considering other cognitive systems, in addition to exchange mechanisms, that humans use to manage the complex social world. These cognitive systems function to assemble a support group for potential conflicts. The hypothesis proposes that human friendship is less like trade and more like alliance politics. Human conflicts are usually decided by the number of supporters mobilized on each side (rather than strength or agility). This, the authors claim, is true for a wide range of disputes, from family debates over weekend plans to homicidal attacks (but is it? It seems like a very quick generalisation). Therefore, individuals can increase their power by creating and maintaining a network of allies, well in advance, before the onset of an argument or quarrel. In a way, one of the main predictors of friendship is the value of the alliance. The value of an ally, or friend, drops with every additional alliance they must make, so the best alliance is one in which your ally ranks you above everyone else as well. So in a way, it\u2019s still about feelings\u00a0: you like me best, and I like you best.<\/p>\n
DeScioli and Kurzban suggest that people have specialized decision processes that prioritize those individuals who tend to be most helpful in conflicts\u00a0: e.g. those with fewer stronger commitments to others. This analysis suggests that people would benefit from ranking friends, but also hiding certain friend-ranking, and ranking friends according to their own position in partners\u2019 rankings.<\/p>\n
It also serves as an explanation for some petty human behaviors not explained by traditional \u00ab\u00a0reciprocal altruism\u00a0\u00bb theories. For example, the Alliance Hypothesis could explain why people are extremely concerned with comparisons to others in their social circle. It also explains how jealousies and aggression can erupt among groups of friends just as alliances are shifted or maintained. And also why people need to gather and store information about their friends’ other friendships. In slightly more technical terms, people need to possess egocentric and allocentric representations of the social world\u00a0: in some circumstances, people are motivated to conceal this information, and egocentric friend-ranking is determined by allocentric representations of partners\u2019 friend-rankings more than others\u2019 traits like popularity or wealth.<\/p>\n
No cross-cultural study is discussed in the paper \u2013 so, does the hypothesis (and its predictions regarding concerns for ranking and trustworthy alliances) make sense more broadly\u00a0?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like me, you must sometimes receive these \u00ab\u00a0rank your friends\u00a0\u00bb messages through your social network. It starts\u00a0by saying how high you have been ranked in someone\u2019s best friends list, and thereby invites you to return the compliment. It seems like crude ranking and mere reciprocity. But notice, it is limited to the positive side. Be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":910,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Why you should rank your friends (but not tell them) - International Cognition and Culture Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/ophelias-blog\/why-you-should-rank-your-friends-but-not-tell-them\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why you should rank your friends (but not tell them) - International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Like me, you must sometimes receive these \u00ab\u00a0rank your friends\u00a0\u00bb messages through your social network. It starts\u00a0by saying how high you have been ranked in someone\u2019s best friends list, and thereby invites you to return the compliment. It seems like crude ranking and mere reciprocity. 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<\/a>Raffaello: Self-Portrait with friend (Mus\u00e9e du Louvre)<\/h6>\n