Friends Without Benefits: A Guest Post

A reposting of an original article by Joseph McDonald

Do you want to avoid the friend zone?
Photo by freedigitalphotos.net.

Guys DREAD the friend zone. That heart-aching moment when the girl you’ve been fawning over for years says you’re the best listener, the sister she never had, or so much better than a diary! You’ve been so nice to her and her friends, listening to all their drama. But that’s just the problem... you’re too nice to too many people.

Research performed by Aaron Lukaszewski and Jim Roney at the University of California – Santa Barbara (UCSB) tested whether preferences for personality traits were dependent on who the target was. In Experiment 1, they asked UCSB undergrads, on a scale from 1 to 7, the degree to which their ideal partner would display certain traits towards them and towards others. These traits included synonyms for kindness (e.g. affectionate, considerate, generous, etc.), trustworthiness (committed, dependable, devoted, etc.), and dominance (aggressive, brave, bold, etc.). Experiment 2 replicated the procedures of Experiment 1. The only difference was that the term “others” was divided into subsets including unspecified, family/friends, opposite sex non-family/friend, and same-sex non-family/friend.

Let’s go over the do’s and don’ts so that future “nice guys” aren’t friend zoned. According to the findings, as graphed below:

Figure from Aaron and Jim's 2010 Evolution and Human Behavior paper.

1. Women generally prefer men who are kind and trustworthy. So, to get that girl, don’t be mean; that’s not the point. This isn’t 3rd grade so don’t pull her hair and expect her to know that you LIKE-like her.

2. Women prefer men who are kinder and more trustworthy towards them than anyone else. So it’s not so much whether you are nice enough, its whether she knows you are nicer to her than anyone else.

3. Women prefer men who display similar amounts of dominance as they do kindness. Dominance isn’t a bad thing, as long as you can distinguish her friends from her foes; especially her male friends.

4. To make things more complicated, women also prefer men who are directly dominant toward other men but don’t display dominance toward them or their family/friends, whether male or female. Some guys may want to befriend these other men, but be weary. Women preferred dominance over kindness in this situation, so kindness may not be enough.

These preferences may have developed to avoid mating with someone willing to expend physical and material resources for extramarital relationships, and invest greater in her and the children. Moderate kindness and trustworthiness toward others will maintain social relationships and prevent detrimental relationships, which may be why women generally prefer kind and trustworthy guys. But in all fairness, women can be in the friend zone too; just look at Deenah and Vinny (excuse the shameful Jersey Shore reference).

There are some things that guys look for in a mate, so ladies, here is a little advice:

1. Guys generally want a mate who is kind and trustworthy, too. We’re not that different; so don’t act a little crazy because you think he likes it. He doesn’t.

2. Guys also prefer women who display dominance toward other women (non- family/friend). Don’t be afraid to put that random girl with the prying eyes in her place.

Contrary to the hypotheses predicting female mate preferences, male mate preferences may have developed as a way to take advantage of strong female-based social hierarchies. No matter what the reasoning, however, if you can
1) be kinder and more trustworthy towards that special someone than anyone else and
2) display dominance over other same-sex people, then feel free to say good-bye to the friend zone!


For further details, check out the original experiment:

Lukaszewski, A., & Roney, J. (2010). Kind toward whom? Mate preferences for personality traits are target specific Evolution and Human Behavior, 31 (1), 29-38 DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.06.008

Caught in My Web: All About Dogs

Image by Luc Viatour at Wikimedia.

For this edition of Caught in My Web, we celebrate our wonderful canine companions.

1. Nina Golgowski at HuffPost Science explains research that shows that dogs give treats to their doggy friends, but not to doggy strangers.

2. Rafael Mantesso's wife left him and took everything but the dog and the empty white apartment. Rafael found inspiration in his predicament and created some of the most wonderful photos ever! Check them out here.

3. Let puppies teach you about complexity theory in this TED talk by Nicolas Perony.

4. Virginia Hughes at National Geographic shares research that shows that dog brains process voice information similarly to our own.

5. And just for fun, here is Bella the dog singing “Jingle Bells”:

Dogs Have Co-opted Our Physiology to Win Our Hearts

Photo by Roberto Ferrari at Wikimedia Commons.

Why do we feel genuine love and friendship for our dogs? The social relationship between humans and dogs is not just special, it is downright AMAZING! Domestic dogs are the only species that we know of that will spontaneously respond to cooperative human gestures, such as pointing or gazing in a specific direction, without any training or prior experience. Wolves and even non-human great apes require extensive experience with people to understand these human gestures. Dogs, on the other hand, are so naturally in-tune with our gestures that they, like human children, are likely to interpret eye contact as communicative, even when it is not. New research has found that eye contact between ourselves and our canine companions may fuel an interspecies physiological feedback loop that keeps our two species living as best friends.

Today at Accumulating Glitches, I am exploring new research about how our four-legged best friends change our brain physiology so we will love and care for them more. Check out the full story here. 

And this is why we love our dogs so much:

Further reading:
MacLean, E.L. and Hare, B. Dogs hijack the human bonding pathway, Science, 438:6232, 280-281 (2015). DOI: 10.1126/science.aab1200

Nagasawa, M., Mitsui, S., En, S., Ohtani, N., Ohta, M., Sakuma, Y., Onaka, T., Mogi, K.., and Kikusui, T. Oxytocin-gaze positive loop and the coevolution of human-dog bonds, Science, 438:6232, 333-336 (2015). DOI:10.1126/science.1261022

Friends Without Benefits: A Guest Post

By Joseph McDonald

Do you want to avoid the friend zone?
Photo by freedigitalphotos.net.

Guys DREAD the friend zone. That heart-aching moment when the girl you’ve been fawning over for years says you’re the best listener, the sister she never had, or so much better than a diary! You’ve been so nice to her and her friends, listening to all their drama. But that’s just the problem... you’re too nice to too many people.

Research performed by Aaron Lukaszewski and Jim Roney at the University of California – Santa Barbara (UCSB) tested whether preferences for personality traits were dependent on who the target was. In Experiment 1, they asked UCSB undergrads, on a scale from 1 to 7, the degree to which their ideal partner would display certain traits towards them and towards others. These traits included synonyms for kindness (e.g. affectionate, considerate, generous, etc.), trustworthiness (committed, dependable, devoted, etc.), and dominance (aggressive, brave, bold, etc.). Experiment 2 replicated the procedures of Experiment 1. The only difference was that the term “others” was divided into subsets including unspecified, family/friends, opposite sex non-family/friend, and same-sex non-family/friend.

Let’s go over the do’s and don’ts so that future “nice guys” aren’t friend zoned. According to the findings, as graphed below:

Figure from Aaron and Jim's 2010 Evolution and Human Behavior paper.

1. Women generally prefer men who are kind and trustworthy. So, to get that girl, don’t be mean; that’s not the point. This isn’t 3rd grade so don’t pull her hair and expect her to know that you LIKE-like her.

2. Women prefer men who are kinder and more trustworthy towards them than anyone else. So it’s not so much whether you are nice enough, its whether she knows you are nicer to her than anyone else.

3. Women prefer men who display similar amounts of dominance as they do kindness. Dominance isn’t a bad thing, as long as you can distinguish her friends from her foes; especially her male friends.

4. To make things more complicated, women also prefer men who are directly dominant toward other men but don’t display dominance toward them or their family/friends, whether male or female. Some guys may want to befriend these other men, but be weary. Women preferred dominance over kindness in this situation, so kindness may not be enough.

These preferences may have developed to avoid mating with someone willing to expend physical and material resources for extramarital relationships, and invest greater in her and the children. Moderate kindness and trustworthiness toward others will maintain social relationships and prevent detrimental relationships, which may be why women generally prefer kind and trustworthy guys. But in all fairness, women can be in the friend zone too; just look at Deenah and Vinny (excuse the shameful Jersey Shore reference).

There are some things that guys look for in a mate, so ladies, here is a little advice:

1. Guys generally want a mate who is kind and trustworthy, too. We’re not that different; so don’t act a little crazy because you think he likes it. He doesn’t.

2. Guys also prefer women who display dominance toward other women (non- family/friend). Don’t be afraid to put that random girl with the prying eyes in her place.

Contrary to the hypotheses predicting female mate preferences, male mate preferences may have developed as a way to take advantage of strong female-based social hierarchies. No matter what the reasoning, however, if you can
1) be kinder and more trustworthy towards that special someone than anyone else and
2) display dominance over other same-sex people, then feel free to say good-bye to the friend zone!


For further details, check out the original experiment:

Lukaszewski, A., & Roney, J. (2010). Kind toward whom? Mate preferences for personality traits are target specific Evolution and Human Behavior, 31 (1), 29-38 DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.06.008

Friends with Benefits

"It is not so much our friends' help that helps us
as the confident knowledge that they will help us."
-Epicurus, Greek philosopher (341 - 270 BC)

“Silences make the real conversations between friends.
Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.”
-Margaret Lee Runbeck, American author (1905 - 1956)

photo by Jérôme Micheletta, Macaca Nigra Project

Where would we be without our friends? Friends lend a hand in bad times and cheer us on in good times. They make us laugh, share their food, and tell us where to find interesting things… like fruit or coconuts!

Okay, so maybe finding fruit and coconuts isn’t that high on your priority list, but it seems to be pretty high on the list for crested macaques. And lucky for them, they have friends to rely on too.

Jérôme Micheletta and Bridget Waller at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom set out to determine whether social factors influence the ability of crested macaques to follow the eye gaze of a group-mate and potentially gain important information. To do this, they hung out at the Marwell Wildlife Zoological Park in Winchester, U.K. every day to watch and video record the crested macaques. An experimenter would wait for two crested macaques to be within 1 meter of each other with one individual facing the experimenter (they called this animal “the informant”… not to be confused with Matt Damon) and the other individual facing the informant and facing away from the experimenter (they called this animal “the subject”). You can imagine, this process involved a lot of waiting around. Once the animals were in place, the experimenter held up a yummy treat (an orange, a banana, or a coconut). The informant would see the treat and then the subject would either look at the treat or not. In these cases, the subjects looked at the treats 64% of the time.

This figure from Micheletta and Waller's Animal Behaviour
paper shows their experimental procedures.

But how do we know that the subjects followed the informants’ gaze and didn’t respond to something the experimenter or some distant cage-mate did? Micheletta and Waller also recorded the responses of the same animals in a control situation: the experimenter would wait for a subject to be away from its cage-mates, but with its back turned to the experimenter. Then the experimenter would hold up the yummy treat. In these control trials, the subjects looked at the treats only 7% of the time.

So it looks like crested macaques use their peers’ eye gaze as information on where to look. They also were faster to look if their cage-mate moved his/her head in combination with an eye movement, rather than just the eyes. But, does the social context matter? For each pair of macaques, Micheletta and Waller calculated the relative dominance status and friendship strength. They used months of observations of aggressive encounters in which they knew the winners and losers of each encounter to rank the overall dominance hierarchy of each animal in the group. A typical aggressive encounter either involved one monkey chasing another (which would either run away or crouch) or a monkey approaching another and taking away his/her food or grooming-buddy or mate (How rude!). They also determined friendship strength by calculating the average number of times they sat in contact with or groomed a specific individual versus other animals in the group.

If the informant was a friend, the subject was quicker to look at the food than if the informant was not a friend, although friendship did not influence the overall success rate. And the relative dominance status didn’t seem to have any effect.

Why might macaques follow their friends’ gazes faster than nonfriends’ gazes? Maybe they are generally more visually attentive to their friends than their nonfriends, as is true in chimpanzees, siamangs, chacma baboons and ring-tailed lemurs.  Or maybe a friend’s information is more relevant than a nonfriend’s information. Friends often share motivations and needs and often compete less and share more with each other than with nonfriends (although there are many exceptions to this, as you may have experienced). All of these possibilities leave open new avenues for future research. But one thing is clear: It sure is good to have friends.

Want to know more? Check this out:

Micheletta, J., & Waller, B. (2012). Friendship affects gaze following in a tolerant species of macaque, Macaca nigra Animal Behaviour, 83 (2), 459-467 DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.11.018

Do you have a thought on friends that you would like to share? Comment below.