How your personality influences friendships

Anyone who has had close friendships knows that while everyone can make and maintain friends, it seems to be easier or more difficult to do so varying on the person. What exactly then, are indicators of individuals being successful at developing friendships with others?

One avenue in particular shows that personality traits are important indicators of relationship processes, mate selection, and relationship outcomes (Harris et al., 2016). In particular, the Big Five personality model is useful to examine how personality traits affect the development of friendships (Harris et al., 2016). So, before we delve any deeper you must be wondering what exactly these big five personality traits are and what they mean. This model consists of five personality factors: openness (to experience), conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Selfhout et al., 2010). The opposing characteristics to these traits would include conventional and close-minded thinking for openness; impulsivity and disorganization for conscientiousness; introversion and unsociability for extraversion; antagonistic and disagreeableness for agreeableness; and finally, being emotionally stable for neuroticism.

Which traits matter?

Several traits are found to be associated with friendship selection: extraversion, agreeableness, and openness (Selfhout et al., 2010). Extraversion in particular seems to be the most important factor for selecting friends as extroverted individuals usually have more positive social interactions and are thus more socially active (Selfhout et al., 2010). Agreeableness is more associated with being selected as a friend by others as agreeable individuals tend to be more popular with others (Selfhout et al., 2010). Further, while openness itself does not particularly play a large role in whether you will be selected as a friend or not, similarity in openness does through the sharing of values between individuals (Selfhout et al., 2010). Neuroticism and conscientiousness are traits that don’t have influence on forming and selecting friendships, however they do affect the maintenance of relationships (Selfhout et al., 2010).

Don’t fret yet if you think not being high in these traits is the reason why you’re having difficulty forming friendships. The similarity of big five personality traits between individuals actually has the greatest effect on friendship selection than the direct effects of personality traits (Selfhout et al., 2010). This means that a match in personality between you and whoever you want to befriend is the highest indicator of a successful friendship forming. So, your best bet at making friends is by finding those with similar traits to you be it through clubs, online networks, volunteering, etc. Putting yourself out there to interact with new people through social gatherings to see if you click or not is a great and low-stakes way to try and make friends.

References

Harris, K., & Vazire, S. (2016). On friendship development and the big five personality traits: Friendship and the big five personality traits. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 10(11), 647-667. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12287

Selfhout, M., Burk, W., Branje, S., Denissen, J., Van Aken, M., & Meeus, W. (2010). Emerging late adolescent friendship networks and big five personality traits: A social network approach. Journal of Personality, 78(2), 509-538. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2010.00625.x