Half Of Your Friends May Not Think Of You As A Friend

Here’s a fun exercise: Take a minute and count up all your friends. Not just the close ones, or the ones you’ve seen recently — I mean every single person on this Earth that you consider a pal.

Got a number in your mind? Good. Now cut it in half. As it turns out, we can be pretty terrible at knowing who our friends are. At least that's the findings in a study by Plos One.

Then there are all kinds of fun graphs and things to look at. I know, my definition of 'fun' is slightly different from everyone else but I guess that's why I only have half of the friends I think I have. See how that works? The article goes on to conclude:

Individuals commonly assume their affective relationships to be reciprocal by default. For instance, when one considers another individual as “friend”, the common expectation is that this other individual also thinks of them as friends. Moreover, reciprocity is implicitly assumed in many scientific studies of friendship networks by, for example, marking two individuals as being friends or not being friends. This paper also has significant implications for research into peer pressure [and] social influence.

I guess no one likes to think of themselves as the unwanted hanger-on, chasing a relationship that doesn’t really exist and maybe never will. This blind spot, may be a form of emotional self-defense. Luckily, though, it's inky Tuesday, so you’ll have plenty of time to give things a good hard look and question everything you thought you knew.