Question 1

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar is best known for proposing a numerical limit on what?

Accepted Answer

Stable social relationships a person can maintain. Dunbar's number — often cited as roughly 150 — proposes the cognitive limit on the stable social relationships any one person can comfortably maintain.

Question 2

Within Dunbar's layered model of social circles, the innermost circle of about five people typically includes whom?

Accepted Answer

Closest intimates and supports. Dunbar describes nested circles, with a small inner layer of around five intimates, surrounded by larger circles of close friends, friends, and acquaintances.

Question 3

Psychologist Jeffrey Hall published a 2018 study suggesting roughly how many hours of shared time it takes to move from acquaintance to 'close friend'?

Accepted Answer

Around 200 hours. Hall's study at the University of Kansas estimated it takes around 200 hours of together time to move someone from acquaintance to close friend, with quality of interaction mattering as much as quantity.

Question 4

The Harvard Study of Adult Development, sometimes called the longest study of adult life, has found that the strongest predictor of long-term well-being is what?

Accepted Answer

Quality of close relationships. Robert Waldinger and colleagues have reported that warm, supportive relationships are a more robust predictor of long-term physical and mental health than wealth, fame, or cholesterol levels.

Question 5

Julianne Holt-Lunstad's meta-analyses on social connection found that lacking social ties is associated with what?

Accepted Answer

Mortality risk comparable to well-known physical risk factors. Holt-Lunstad's research suggests chronic social isolation is associated with mortality risk on par with risk factors like smoking, underscoring friendship as a health issue.

Question 6

Beverley Fehr's research on friendship has focused on identifying what?

Accepted Answer

Prototypical features of close friendship across studies. Fehr's work mapped out the features people most associate with close friendship — trust, loyalty, mutual support — and how those features differ across relationships.

Question 7

Carolyn Cutrona's research on social support distinguishes between which two broad categories?

Accepted Answer

Emotional and instrumental support. Cutrona's framework separates emotional support (listening, comfort) from instrumental support (practical help) and tangible resources, among other dimensions.

Question 8

Stanford psychologist Laura Carstensen's socioemotional selectivity theory predicts what about friendships across the lifespan?

Accepted Answer

As people perceive less time ahead, they prioritize fewer but emotionally meaningful relationships. Carstensen's theory holds that when people sense time is limited, they invest more selectively in the relationships that matter most, often leading to deeper but smaller social circles.

Question 9

Research by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler on social networks found what about happiness?

Accepted Answer

Happiness can spread through social networks up to several degrees of separation. Christakis and Fowler's analyses of the Framingham Heart Study network suggested emotional states like happiness cluster in networks and can be associated with friends of friends.

Question 10

What does psychologist William Rawlins describe in his work as the 'dialectics' of friendship?

Accepted Answer

Ongoing tensions like independence-dependence and openness-closedness within friendships. Rawlins emphasizes that friendships continuously balance tensions — being close yet independent, open yet private — and that good friendships negotiate these dialectics over time.

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