{"id":16052,"date":"2012-10-28T11:10:56","date_gmt":"2012-10-28T18:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=16052"},"modified":"2012-10-28T11:15:35","modified_gmt":"2012-10-28T18:15:35","slug":"men-and-women-can-be-friends-but-can-studies-on-cross-gender-friendship-be-honestly-reported","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=16052","title":{"rendered":"Men And Women Can Be Friends, But Can Studies On Cross-Gender Friendship Be Honestly Reported?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan<\/a> links to this Scientific American<\/em> article, entitled “Men and Women Can’t Be ‘Just Friends’.”<\/a> Adrian Ward, the author of the article, probably didn’t write that headline, but it’s a fair summary of his article:<\/p>\n

The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them\u2014a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men\u2019s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt\u2014basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends. Women, too, were blind to the mindset of their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual. As a result, men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the study must have found huge differences between men and women, right? <\/p>\n

Well, let’s take a look at what Ward didn’t report: the numbers (pdf link<\/a>). First, Ward reports that “men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa.” The study authors asked their subjects ((The sample for this part of the study consisted of an unrepresentative sample of 88 heterosexual students at the University of Wisconsin, all fulfilling a “course research participation requirement,” race not reported but I’d bet a comic book they were nearly all white. For a later part of the study, involving adults age 27-52, subjects were recruited by asking the students from the earlier part of the study for names and addresses of older friends and relatives. 80% of the participants in the second half of the study were from just a couple of states in the Midwest, nearly all were married, and once again race was unreported but…)) to rate their attraction on a scale from 1 (“not at all attracted”) to 9 (“extremely attracted,”) with 5 defined as “moderately attracted.” Here’s what they found:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The average report for women was 4, versus 5 for men. Ward could have more accurately reported that men’s and women’s average responses were “almost alike.”<\/p>\n

Now let’s check out the differences between reported and perceived attractions. Using the same nine-point scale:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Again, there is a difference here, but contrary to Ward’s reporting that difference is modest. Men perceived their female friends as slightly less than moderately attracted to them (4.5), when those female friends were in fact… slightly less than moderately attracted to them (4). Women perceived their male friends as slightly less than moderately attracted (4.5), when those male friends were in fact moderately attracted (5). On average, women slightly underestimated attraction and men slightly overestimated attraction, but on average both women and men were only a half-point off the mark, and the differences between estimates and reality fell within the margin of error.<\/p>\n

There is one graph in the study showing a large difference between the sexes, which is on the question of if people see sexual attraction to an opposite-sex friend as a cost or a benefit of the friendship.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All study participants were asked to list up to ten ways that their “cross-sex friendships enhanced their lives or were beneficial to them,” and up to ten ways “cross-sex friendships complicated their lives or were costly to them.” Although both men and women were more likely to list attraction as a disadvantage, there was a notable difference in the percentages — women were much more likely to list attraction as a disadvantage. <\/p>\n

There was also a notable similarity – the majority of respondents, male or female, didn’t list attraction as either a cost or a benefit. <\/p>\n

Ward opened his article by asking “Can heterosexual men and women ever be just friends?” This study did address that question. Of the college-aged respondents, 98% of men and 97% of women said that they had opposite-sex friends. Among the respondents age 27-52, 86% of men and 88% of women reported having opposite-sex friends. <\/p>\n

In other words, the overwhelming majority of both men and women reported that they have opposite-sex friends. Strangely enough, Ward didn’t find that result worth reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan links to this Scientific American article, entitled “Men and Women Can’t Be ‘Just Friends’.” Adrian Ward, the author of the article, probably didn’t write that headline, but it’s a fair summary of his article: The results suggest large … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism-sexism-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16052"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16072,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16052\/revisions\/16072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}