Despite how natural friendship can feel, people rarely stop to analyze it. How do you know when someone will make a good friend' When is it time to move on from a friendship' Oftentimes, people rely on gut intuitions to answer these kinds of questions. In psychology research, there's no universally accepted definition of a friend. Traditionally, when psychologists have analyzed friendship, it's often been through the lens of exchange. How much did that friend do for me' How much did I do for them' The idea is that friendships are transactional, where friends stick around only as long as they are getting at least as much as they are giving in the friendship. But this focus doesn't capture what feels like the essence of friendship for many people. We and our colleagues think another model for relationships ' what we call risk-pooling ' better matches what many people experience. In this kind of friendship, no one is keeping track of who did what for whom. Our research over the past...
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