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Do Your Friends Actually Like You?

Reviewer: Natasha Kurnia Salma S.


We all have interaction with people during the course of a day, week, month
and year. You may give warm greeting to them or even an embrace. Sometimes you
put yourself in chitchat or deeper conversation. But, have you ever asked yourself
who among those people are your actually friends?
Differentiating between perceived and actual friendship has been much
discussed among experts. Its getting a serious concern for experts, because
relationship with others such as friendship can give an impact on ones health and
well-being.
A recent study, published in the journal PLOS One titled Are You Your
Friends Friend? Poor Perception of Friendship Ties Limits the Ability to Promote
Behavioral Change, found out that from 84 friendship in a business management
class, only 53 percent who has a mutual feeling of friendship, while there are 94
percent expectation of reciprocity. Alex Pentland, a computational social science
researcher at M.I.T. and co-author of of the study, said that the problem is about the
confusion in figuring out the real definition of friendship. He is totally sure that if you
ask people to define friendship, youll get an awkward silence followed by er or
um.
A professor of philosophy at Princeton, who wrote a book titled On
Friendship, Alexander Nehamas, said that friendship is difficult to describe. In his
opinion, friendship is more like beauty or art, which whip up something deep within
us and is appreciated for its own sake.
A professor of English at Vassar College, who teaches a course on the
literature of friendship, Ronald Sharp, thought that the most important thing for
defining friendship is who and what the two of you become in each others presence.
What someone can do for you is not really necessary part of a friendship. In his
opinion, people nowadays forget the art of doing nothing but spending time in each
others company. It has been replaced by tons of texts and tweets. They assure us that
people prioritize the efficiency of relationships than touch with their friend. Thus, he
has concluded that friends are people you take the time to understand and allow to
understand you.

A British evolutionary psychologist, Robin I.M. Dunbar define a friendship


with the layers that he made, where the topmost layer consists of only one or
two people, for instance, a spouse and best friend with whom you are most intimate
and interact daily. The next layer can accommodate at most four people for whom you
have great affinity, affection and concern and who require weekly attention to
maintain. Out from there, the stage which contains more casual friends with whom
you invest less time and tend to have a less strong connection. Without consistent
contact, they easily become just acquaintances. You may be friendly with them but
they arent friends. Ironically, People may say they have more than five but you can
be pretty sure they are not high-quality friendships.
According to medical experts, engaging in low quality, unfulfilling or
nonreciprocal relationships can cause physical adverse effect. Its not only about the
resulting feelings of loneliness and isolation that will be able to increase the risk of
death as much as smoking, alcoholism and obesity; you may also lose health, or
function, in the so-called smart vagus nerve, which brain researchers think allows us
to be in intimate, supportive and reciprocal relationships in the first place. Lacking
authentic friendships, the smart vagus nerve is not exercised. When it loses its
capability and ones anxiety remains high, it will be difficult to make abiding, deep
connections.
From this article, we can conclude that its worth to identify who among the
many people that we meet are truly friends. Fortunately, there is no easy or agreed
definition of friendship. Theres a certain thing that all of those experts and the writer
believe in friendship, its the tool that can shape who we are and create other
dimensions for us to see the world. So, be careful who you choose as friends because
your friends show who you are. At the end, you are the only person who can identify
who your truly friends are.
Opinion:
Those experts opinion can enlighten our way to find the real definition of
friendship. But at the end, we have our own way to define it. I agree with Robin I.M.
Dunbar that define a friendship as separated layers. But I have my own tiers.

First

layer consist of people who admit bluntly that they're in one peer group with me.
They're the primer layer that I have interaction most of the time. We have our
responsibility for assuring each other that we're fine. Second layer, people I can have

good conversation with and share my honest argument about many things. But there's
no responsibility for taking care of each other or at least have certain schedule for
having communication or meeting. Third layer, people who just come to my life for a
certain business like partnership working and then walk away when its over. In my
opinion, high quality of friendship is the relationship that will allow you to feel
comfortable to share whatever you feel and think about many things. Truly friend
knows how to do stupid things together but also know how to protect you from
dangerous situations.

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