FYI, this is from 2012, The paper is under the link "New research"[1].
1: http://bleske-rechek.com/April%20Website%20Files/Bleske-Rech...
Men and women can't be just friends
11–20 of 41 posts
Re: Men and women can't be just friends
#12researchers brought 88 pairs of undergraduate opposite-sex friends into…a science lab. Ok, so this research has nothing to do with men or women - just horny near-adults.
read on... >> Males were significantly more likely than females to list romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships, and this discrepancy increased as men aged—males on the younger end of the spectrum were four times more likely than females to report romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships, whereas those on the older end of the spectrum were ten times more likely to do the same.
Yeah, but what was the age range they tested? If they're comparing 22 year-olds to 18 year-olds, they're still only covering a small range.
Re: Men and women can't be just friends
#13Ya, I don't buy this. I know this is just my experience, but I've had plenty of "just friends" who were members of the opposite sex, and nothing bad ever happened.
Just speaking for myself: I have never persued a friendship with a woman if I was not at least attracted to her.
I don't see female colleagues at my current job as friends and I feel the same about the girlfriends of my friends. Those are just platonic relationships to me that I am not interested in deepening in any way.
Re: Men and women can't be just friends
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a follow-up study, 249 adults (many of whom were married) were asked to list the positive and negative aspects of being friends with a specific member of the opposite sex. There was a follow-up study, but it doesn't say how much, if any, of the original research was tried again.
This is what passes as science in 'scientific american'?! There's not a single absolute number reported aside from the laughingly small sample size of 400 adults in a world of 7,000,000,000.
The paper is linked. Feel free to take a look[1].
1: http://bleske-rechek.com/April%20Website%20Files/Bleske-Rech...
Re: Men and women can't be just friends
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
read on... >> Males were significantly more likely than females to list romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships, and this discrepancy increased as men aged—males on the younger end of the spectrum were four times more likely than females to report romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships, whereas those on the older end of the spectrum were ten times more likely to do the same.
Yeah, but what was the age range they tested? If they're comparing 22 year-olds to 18 year-olds, they're still only covering a small range.
Accordingly, we aimed to compare the
extent to which emerging adults (late adolescence to mid-twenties) and young and
middle-aged adults (late twenties to about 50) experience attraction to their cross-sex
friends
From the linked paper. That's for the follow-up study.
Re: Men and women can't be just friends
#16First off, this is too vague of a generalization based on their sample size. It makes for a nice casual read but I can't take it too seriously. Though, I must note, my anecdotal experience also makes me think this is more of a norm.
This also agrees with observed primate behaviors. Males have an incentive to identify potential mates while female have incentive to pick one out of the many available. (Male can impregnate many females in a year, female can only bear one child at a time.)
Friendship and romance also have overlapping characteristics. Example: "bromance" where it's not sexual but outsiders might see characters typically associated with romance.
It's too big of a topic and I would probably write an essay.
Re: Men and women can't be just friends
#17Ya, I don't buy this. I know this is just my experience, but I've had plenty of "just friends" who were members of the opposite sex, and nothing bad ever happened.
Just speaking for myself: I have never persued a friendship with a woman if I was not at least attracted to her. I don't see female colleagues at my current job as friends and I feel the same about the girlfriends of my friends. Those are just platonic relationships to me that I am not interested in deepening in any way.
Wow, that's sad.
Re: Men and women can't be just friends
#18Ya, I don't buy this. I know this is just my experience, but I've had plenty of "just friends" who were members of the opposite sex, and nothing bad ever happened.
Just speaking for myself: I have never persued a friendship with a woman if I was not at least attracted to her. I don't see female colleagues at my current job as friends and I feel the same about the girlfriends of my friends. Those are just platonic relationships to me that I am not interested in deepening in any way.
[deleted]
Re: Men and women can't be just friends
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what passes as science in 'scientific american'?! There's not a single absolute number reported aside from the laughingly small sample size of 400 adults in a world of 7,000,000,000.
If your bar is that high then you can say that about literally any study. What do you expect, a study involving a million people?!
The sample size is irrelevant, what people expect is to confirm what they already believe.
Re: Men and women can't be just friends
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what passes as science in 'scientific american'?! There's not a single absolute number reported aside from the laughingly small sample size of 400 adults in a world of 7,000,000,000.
How are you judging that that's a small sample size?
Given the claim in the title they talk about "men and women". So the sample size is small because:
1) zero variance in location
2) very little variance in age (all undergraduate) (variances of the ages: 1.33 to 7.19, so 70% of their samples all were in two age ranges, one 3 year wide, one 14 year wide)
3) cultural variation : essentially zero (?) they didn't even bother to check AFAICT