Friendship is a social relationship in which people help each other in times of need. People may help others for many reasons. They may help in order to pay back a favor, to improve their reputation, or to receive favors in the future. An important aspect of friendship, by contrast to these examples, is that friends help each other because they simply care about a friend’s well-being. In different parts of the world, friends help each other by giving advice, sharing food, loaning money and tools, assisting with the planting and harvesting of crops, and defending each other in danger.
Something like friendship exists in most—if not all—societies around the world. In different societies, however, people make and keep friends in different ways. In many parts of the world, friends can go through a ceremony that binds them together for the rest of their lives. The Lunda people of Zambia , for example, had a friendship ceremony called the kasendi. Friendship ceremonies can sometimes involve the whole community and resemble a wedding. In other places, friendships are such a valuable source of help and support that parents will pass friendships down to their children, much like an inheritance. The kinds of help that friends are expected to give can also vary across societies. In some places, people view lending money to friends as a sign of a good friendship. Other people think that lending money to friends should be avoided. They believe it can harm a friendship.
One important way that friendships differ across cultures is in how much people are willing to violate a rule to help a friend. In an international study, for example, people in different countries gave different responses when asked if they would lie under oath to help a friend in a court case. In some countries, nearly all people said they would tell the truth rather than help their friend. In other countries, the majority of people said they would help their friend instead of telling the truth.
Scientists are studying whether other animals also have friendships. Since non-human animals cannot talk about their relationships, these studies must focus on how animals behave toward each other. Among chimpanzees and a few other animals, certain pairs of individuals prefer to spend time together. They help, protect, and groom each other and share food. These special relationships closely resemble friendships in humans. Researchers are trying to understand if the relationships arise from the same patterns of thought and brain activity that guide behavior among human friends.
Social networking websites , such as Facebook , enable people to keep track of many more acquaintances than they did in the past. These acquaintances are often referred to as “friends.” However, researchers have found that people distinguish between network acquaintances and close friends. Even when people have hundreds of “friends” on social media, they continue to maintain a smaller circle of close friends.
