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Friendship, Culture, and Gender

People from different cultures have varied expectations regarding friendships. For example, most Westerners believe that friendships don’t endure, that you’ll naturally lose some friends and gain others over time (Berscheid & Regan, 2005). This belief contrasts sharply with attitudes in other cultures, in which people view friendships as deeply intimate and lasting. As just one example, when askedto identify the closest relationship in their lives, Euro-Americans tend to select romantic partners, whereas Japanese tend to select friendships (Gudykunst & Nishida, 1993).

Friendship beliefs and practices across cultures are also entangled with gender norms. In the United States and Canada, for instance, friendships between women are often stereotyped as communal, whereas men’s friendships are thought to be agentic. But male and female same-sex friendships are more similar than they are different (Winstead, Derlaga, & Rose, 1997).² Men and women rate the importance of both kinds of friendships equally (Roy, Benenson, & Lilly, 2000), and studies of male friendships in North America have found that companionship is the primary need met by the relationship (Wellman, 1992).

At the same time, Euro-American men, unlike women, learn to avoid direct expressions of affection and intimacy in their friendships with other males. Owing to traditional masculine gender roles, a general reluctance to openly show emotion, and homophobia (among other factors), many men avoid verbal and nonverbal intimacy in their same-sex friendships, such as disclosing personal feelings and vulnerabilities, touching, and hugging (Bank & Hansford, 2000). But in many other cultures, both men and women look to same-sex friends as their primary source of intimacy. For example, in southern Spain, men and women report feeling more comfortable revealing their deepest thoughts to same-sex friends than to spouses (Brandes, 1987). Traditional Javanese (Indonesian) culture holds that marriage should not be too intimate and that a person’s most intimate relationship should be with his or her same-sex friends (Williams, 1992).