How to Make Friends, According to Science

We all meet people but we rarely take the time to follow up and actually begin a friendship. Analyzing eight million phone calls between two million people, researchers at Notre Dame found that what makes close friendships endure is simply staying in touch every two weeks. Now, you don’t need to connect with people that often if they’re not close f

The procedure is based on long-standing research showing that the best way to build a friendship is to escalate self-disclosure gradually, essentially moving through McAdams’s levels. So you should begin with the relatively tame questions—say, “Who would you invite to dinner if you could pick anyone at all?—and take time to work up to the more inte

Achieving regularity will make it more likely that others will feel positively toward you. On the other hand, mere exposure means that to make friends, you have to show up again and again. But mere exposure alone doesn’t build relationships; initiation does. I suggest building up “spontaneous communication” with other regulars over time and seeing

Although we will meet thousands of people in our lifetime, only a handful ever get close enough to us to be called friends. The long journey toward friendship has to begin with a choice and a commitment to the interpersonal process.