Study: Men And Women Can’t Be “Just Friends”

Posted by | December 26, 2012 19:28 | Filed under: Top Stories


The study consisted of 88 pairs of opposite-sex undergrads. The problem is how differently each gender viewed what was going on between each member of the twosome.

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—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s 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—basically, 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.

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Copyright 2012 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.