More
than 40000 readers told us what they looked for in close friendships, what they
expected of friends, what they were wiling to give in return, and how satisfied
they were with the quality of their friendships. The results give cold comfort
to social critics.
Friendship,
to begin with, appears to be unique form of human bonding. Unlike marriage or
parental relationships, it is not defined or regulated by the law; and unlike
other social roles that we are expected to play- as citizens, employees- it has
its own subjective rationale, which is, to enhance feelings of warmth, trust,
love, and affection between two persons.
The
questionnaire on friendship appeared in the march issue of psychology today,
and the findings from that the issues pertaining to trust and betrayal are
central to friendship. Findings also
suggest that our readers do not look for friends only among those who are most
like them, but also find many who differ in race, religion , and ethnic
background. Arguably, the most important conclusion that emerges from the data,
however, is not something that we found, but that we, actually, did not.
In
the questionnaire response, we tired to look for sign of dissatisfaction with
the quality of peoples friendships, but we found only a few. Do people confide
in their friends these days or just turn to them in times of emotional crisis
or do they become more important with time? Turned around, all of these
questions provide clues as to whether people today find deficits in their
friendships, and most of the responses to our survey strongly suggest that they
do not.
When
asked, for example, whether they felt many of their friendships are not
completely reciprocal, almost 60% answered ‘no’. At least among our readers and
others like them, friendship in America appears to be in sound health! When we,
further, asked our readers to tell us what qualities they consider as important
in a friend, they valued, above all, loyalty and the ability to keep
confidences. Warmth, affection, and supportiveness were also high on the list,
while external characteristics like age, income, and occupation, were not.
Again, in the letters commenting on friendship, in general, similar themes
recurred: typical words and phrase were ‘’trust’’, ‘’honesty’’, ‘’accepts me even when he doesn’t
totally approve, ‘’ supportive’’, and ‘’understanding’’.
Some
insights into what holds friendships together can be gained from looking at
what drives them apart. When asked about reasons for a friendships cooling off
or ending, readers gave us two most important reasons: feeling betrayed by a
friend, and discovering that a friend had very different views on the respondent
felt were important. The questionnaire responses, hence, confirm that in a
satisfying friendship, trust and feeling accepted are two of the most essential
components.
Activities of Friendship:
Given
the importance of trust, it is not surprising that ‘had an intimate talk’ is
the activity most or second-most frequently mentioned by both men and woman as
something they have done with friends in the past month. Two other items high
on the list of activities, and that also presuppose a certain amount of trust
and involvement, and helping, out a friend and turning to a friend for help. Social
psychologists have proposed a link that suggest that trust and affection. As
per this theory, self-disclosure and trust must be reciprocated in order for
the friendship to deepen significantly.
Rules of Friendship:
Besides
actual activities, we also inquired about what people would or wouldn’t do with
friends, both in general and in certain hypothetical situations. The purpose
was to get an idea of some of the ‘rules’ that govern behavior between friends.
As
both theory and data suggest, one rule of friendship is that friends confide in
each other sharing important aspects of their personal lives and feelings. 89%
of the respondents said that they would tell a close friend about a failure at
work, despite the fact that overall success is often equated with success at
work. Furthermore, over 68% said that if they have terminal illness, they would
tell a friend. Our respondents also indicated that in some situations, the
rules of friendship involve the right to ask for help; in fact, when asked who
they would turns to in a crisis, 51% said they would turn to friends to before
family.
Yet
friendship has limits; only 10% of the sample said they thought a friend should
help another commit suicide if the friend wanted to but was too feeble to do so
alone (41% said ‘no’ and 36% were opposed to suicide).
Finally,
there are no striking contradictions between peoples descriptions of actual
friendships, their beliefs about friendship in general, and their perception of
rules that apply to these relationships. The consistency of responses, the glowing
descriptions of friends and friendship we received, suggest that our readers are satisfied with their
friendships.
The
Friendship Bond
Mary
Brown Parle
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন