(Continuing a series based on Dunbar’s book, “Friends”. You can find the basic thesis here: https://jotsandscribbles.blog/2023/09/18/introduction-to-friends-by-robin-dunbar/ )
Our age is one that proclaims the value of diversity, and yet people often end up with friends who share a lot in common with them. This is a general and well established human tendency. You become friends with people who have things in common with you. This includes genes (a study showed friends were more twice as likely to share particular variants of the DRD2 dopamine receptor gene as the general population), and ways of thinking (brain scans showed friends were more similar to each other than the general population responding to a film).
A study trying to determine what made people like and trust each other came up with seven pillars, 7 things that friends often have in common. These were:
-having the same language or dialect
-growing up in the same location
-having had the same educational and career experiences
-having the same hobbies and interests
-having the same worldview (moral/religious/pollical)
-having the same sense of humour
-having the same musical tastes
As Dunbar puts it “Birds of a feather really do flock together”. What’s more, the more pillars you share, the more likely people are to be in the inner circles of friendship.
People also tend to prefer friendships with people the same sex, the same ethnicity, the same age and possibly the same personality. Around 70% of a typical person’s social network is the same sex as they are for example. Some combination of different interests, avoiding the “mating market” pressure, and possibly conversational styles makes it easier to be friends with your own sex.
Dunbar suggests that having these things in common is helpful for friendship because they mean we think the same way about things. And knowing how you think makes social interaction and trust easier. He also suggests that originally these pillars of homophily (likeness) would have been shared within your tribe. So we’re all trying to find people in one of our tribes- we now belong to different tribes (music, religion, hobbies, area growing up etc) but originally all these were markers for our single tribe.
[Fascinating side speculation from Dunbar- dialect is a way of making it hard for others to fake being local and freeload off the community. So dialects tend to change fairly fast with new slang for each generation.]
When making friends, we (unconsciously) use the pillars both to screen for potential friends (people who share rare interests or traits with us are particularly likely to become friends) and having invested some time getting to know someone, decide which level of friendship we are sharing with them (with more pillars shared generally leading to closer friendships).
When screening/ making new friendships, research suggests we put extra weight on ethnicity (?as a marker for shared culture or genes), religion, political views, moral views, and strongest of all musical tastes.
As a description for normal friendship making, Dunbar has the evidence on his side. But as a Christian, I want to ask some additional questions:
1) Is it possible to make strong friendships with only one pillar (faith in Jesus) in common? Because the New Testament seems to point to the church being a family-like community which specifically brings together people who would otherwise not be friends (Jew and Gentile, slave and free, Greek and Barbarian, male and female).
2) While it is easier to make friends with people like us, is there evidence that such friendships are actually stronger and more beneficial? Or does the easy option actually reduce the deeper personal connection that can be built across differences (e.g. cross culturally)? Is it good for us to build friendships across the divides?
What seems clear is that shared faith in Jesus, shared moral values, and shared mission serving Jesus does provide a strong pillar for friendship. And so a church that wants to be truly diverse will focus on these things, and actively encourage people to cross ethnic, class and personality divides.
Jots and Scribbles 