Introversion and Friendship Preferences
Location
CELA & Mary Church Terrell Library, First Floor
Document Type
Poster - Open Access
Start Date
4-25-2025 12:00 PM
End Date
4-25-2025 2:00 PM
Abstract
How are friendships formed, and how do we decide which people will become our friends? This study examined if friendship preferences differ based on personality traits, such as introversion, and the consequences that these preferences may have for the formation and maintenance of our social networks.
To test this idea, participants were asked to choose if their friends consisted of people who were involved in a singular/few aspects of their lives or people who were involved in many aspects of their lives. Participants were also asked to indicate how important it would be for them to have many friends, how difficult it would be for them to find good friends, and how committed they were to their friends. Because introverts tend to have smaller social circles than extroverts, and struggle to form close relationships, we reasoned that introverts may benefit from a flexible friendship formation strategy. Therefore, we hypothesized that as introversion increased, participants' preferences for friends who are involved in singular aspects of their lives should also increase. Preliminary results did not support this hypothesis. Although we observed a trend in the predicted direction between introversion and friendship preferences, these results were not statistically significant. Results, however, indicated, that as introversion increased, participants found it less important to have many friends, reported greater difficulty in finding good friends, and greater commitment to their friends. These findings support the idea that introverts find it difficult to expand their social networks and raise questions about the psychological mechanisms that drive these outcomes.
Keywords:
Psychology, Personality, Friends
Recommended Citation
Archibald, Iris, "Introversion and Friendship Preferences" (2025). Research Symposium. 2.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/researchsymp/2025/posters/2
Major
Psychology
Project Mentor(s)
Ledina Imami, Psychology
2025
Introversion and Friendship Preferences
CELA & Mary Church Terrell Library, First Floor
How are friendships formed, and how do we decide which people will become our friends? This study examined if friendship preferences differ based on personality traits, such as introversion, and the consequences that these preferences may have for the formation and maintenance of our social networks.
To test this idea, participants were asked to choose if their friends consisted of people who were involved in a singular/few aspects of their lives or people who were involved in many aspects of their lives. Participants were also asked to indicate how important it would be for them to have many friends, how difficult it would be for them to find good friends, and how committed they were to their friends. Because introverts tend to have smaller social circles than extroverts, and struggle to form close relationships, we reasoned that introverts may benefit from a flexible friendship formation strategy. Therefore, we hypothesized that as introversion increased, participants' preferences for friends who are involved in singular aspects of their lives should also increase. Preliminary results did not support this hypothesis. Although we observed a trend in the predicted direction between introversion and friendship preferences, these results were not statistically significant. Results, however, indicated, that as introversion increased, participants found it less important to have many friends, reported greater difficulty in finding good friends, and greater commitment to their friends. These findings support the idea that introverts find it difficult to expand their social networks and raise questions about the psychological mechanisms that drive these outcomes.
