Teks ini merupakan salahsatu teks untuk ujian mata kuliah Reading 4
Can
heterosexual men and women ever be “just friends”? Few other questions have
provoked debates as intense, family dinners as awkward, literature as lurid,
or movies as memorable.
Still, the question remains unanswered. Daily experience suggests that
non-romantic friendships between males and females are not only possible, but
common—men and women live, work, and play side-by-side, and generally seem to
be able to avoid spontaneously sleeping together. However, the possibility
remains that this apparently platonic coexistence is merely a façade, an
elaborate dance covering up countless sexual impulses bubbling just beneath the
surface.
New
research suggests that there may be some truth to this possibility—that we
may think we’re capable of being “just friends” with members of the opposite
sex, but the opportunity (or perceived opportunity) for “romance” is often
lurking just around the corner, waiting to pounce at the most inopportune
moment.
In order to
investigate the viability of truly platonic opposite-sex friendships—a topic
that has been explored more on the silver screen than in the science
lab—researchers brought 88 pairs of undergraduate opposite-sex friends into…a
science lab. Privacy was paramount—for example, imagine the fallout if
two friends learned that one—and only one—had unspoken romantic feelings for
the other throughout their relationship. In order to ensure honest
responses, the researchers not only followed standard protocols regarding
anonymity and confidentiality, but also required both friends to
agree—verbally, and in front of each other—to refrain from discussing the
study, even after they had left the testing facility. These friendship pairs
were then separated, and each member of each pair was asked a series of
questions related to his or her romantic feelings (or lack thereof) toward the
friend with whom they were taking the study.
The results
suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex
friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice
versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex
friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s
estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually
nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do
with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction
they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic
interest felt by their female friends. Women, too, were blind to the mindset of
their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to
their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual. As a
result, men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by
their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of
attraction felt by their male friends.
Men were also
more willing to act on this mistakenly perceived mutual attraction. Both men
and women were equally attracted to romantically involved opposite-sex friends
and those who were single; “hot” friends were
hot and “not” friends were not, regardless of their relationship
status. However, men and women differed in the extent to which they saw
attached friends as potential romantic partners. Although men were
equally as likely to desire “romantic dates” with “taken” friends as with
single ones, women were sensitive to their male friends’ relationship status
and uninterested in pursuing those who were already involved with someone else.
These results
suggest that men, relative to women, have a particularly hard time being “just
friends.” What makes these results particularly interesting is that they were
found within particular friendships (remember, each participant was only
asked about the specific, platonic, friend with whom they entered the lab).
This is not just a bit of confirmation for stereotypes about sex-hungry males
and naïve females; it is direct proof that two people can experience the exact
same relationship in radically different ways. Men seem to see myriad
opportunities for romance in their supposedly platonic opposite-sex
friendships. The women in these friendships, however, seem to have a completely
different orientation—one that is actually platonic.
To the
outside observer, it seems clear that these vastly different views about the
potential for romance in opposite-sex friendships could cause serious
complications—and people within opposite-sex relationships agree. In a
follow-up study, 249 adults (many of whom were married) were asked to list the
positive and negative aspects of being friends with a specific member of the
opposite sex. Variables related to romantic attraction (e.g., “our relationship
could lead to romantic feelings”) were five times more likely to be listed as
negative aspects of the friendship than as positive ones. However, the differences
between men and women appeared here as well. Males were significantly more
likely than females to list romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex
friendships, and this discrepancy increased as men aged—males on the younger
end of the spectrum were four times more likely than females to report romantic
attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships, whereas those on the older
end of the spectrum were ten times more likely to do the same.
Taken
together, these studies suggest that men and women have vastly different views
of what it means to be “just friends”—and that these differing views have the
potential to lead to trouble. Although women seem to be genuine in their belief
that opposite-sex friendships are platonic, men seem unable to turn off their
desire for something more. And even though both genders agree overall that
attraction between platonic friends is more negative than positive, males are
less likely than females to hold this view.
So, can men
and women be “just friends?” If we all thought like women, almost
certainly. But if we all thought like men, we’d probably be facing a
serious overpopulation crisis.
Are you a scientist who
specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you
read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please
send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning
journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com
or Twitter @garethideas.
About the Author: Adrian F. Ward is a doctoral candidate
in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. His doctoral research is
focused on the relationships between technology, cognition, social
relationships, and self-esteem, and he worked briefly as a scientific
consultant for a dating website.
http://www.scientificamerican.com
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