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The Social Ritual That Made Me a Better Man
… This wasn’t just in my head. In a 2017 study led by the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, researchers at the University of Oxford found that nights out with friends support mental and emotional well-being. Other
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There’s a Name for the People Who Drain You
… The PNAS study didn’t measure what, precisely, hasslers do that is so annoying. But Karen S. Rook, a UC Irvine psychologist who was not involved with the study but who has researched similar phenomena, told me that
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Friendship, on Demand
Friendship is particularly vulnerable to the alienating force of hyper-individualism. It is the most voluntary relationship, held together primarily by choice rather than by blood or law. So as people have withdrawn from relationships in
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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of recent research covering language, friendships, misinformation, and more.
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Yes, Introverts and Extroverts Can Be Good Friends. Here’s How
… Introversion and extroversion are on “opposite ends of a continuum” and not a binary, says William Chopik, a social-personality psychologist at Michigan State University. “People mostly fall somewhere in between those two extremes.” Introverts are quieter
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The Friend-Group Fallacy
My friendships exist in silos. Each hangout is a feverish one-on-one where we share fries and eye contact, confessions, rants, gossip, and mutual attempts at amateur therapy. This patchwork of get-togethers structures my week: a
