Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships

Another explanation might be that mixed-sex conversations become too much of a mating market and cause women, in particular, to feel they need to put themselves on display when they would rather just relax.

she found that the late-evening calls (those after midnight) were much more likely to be directed at a particular person than daytime calls.

there is something very different about primate social relationships that only a very small number of other mammals seem able to match.

seems to be essential if you want to keep the friendship going is to meet up from time to time just to renew the ‘spark’.

The 15-layer was already spoken for, of course, in its capacity as the sympathy group.

the socio-emotional theory of friendship (which suggests that we become more and more selective as we grow older to focus on those few emotionally valuable friendships)

Somehow, acting in synchrony ramps up the endorphin effect to much higher levels, though we still have no idea why.

information network through which we garner knowledge about opportunities that we might never otherwise come across if we had to find them for ourselves.

In fact, all our social activities are more exciting when we do them at night.