How to make a friend fast

Maybe it&#x27;s because I find this research area intriguing, but I did not think that this summary adequately captured the efforts of the original paper [0].<p>I think it was unfortunate that this piece did not begin by conveying that the original study&#x27;s authors specifically state their goal &quot;was to develop a temporary feeling of closeness, not an actual ongoing relationship&quot;.<p>Additionally, like many social psychology studies the nuances of the design and methodology are extremely valuable, yet this piece deems them as &quot;dry&quot; and mostly &quot;devoid of enthusiasm&quot;. Anyone who has contributed to the design of substantial social psychology studies can tell you just how carefully each of these details is considered in design, implementation, and analysis. The original article [0] is full of detail, context, and discussion, and is definitely worth a read.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;psychodramaaustralia.edu.au&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;falling_in_love-aron.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;psychodramaaustralia.edu.au&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;fall...</a>

Makes enough sense to me...<p>If you don&#x27;t know anything about anybody... like the homeless man rummaging through my recycling bin right now looking for bottles... It&#x27;s easy to look down on them or just write them off.<p>But if a neighbour told me anything about that same man... perhaps that he lost his job last year and thus just tries to supplement his income by picking up bottles in his spare time... I would feel immense sorrow even just looking at that man (who is still a stranger to me). Enough so that I would probably offer him some extra cash and a bite to eat if I had it.<p>I witnessed a man break into my neighbor&#x27;s house the other day... which enraged me at first (what if it were my house?!) but when I saw the man who did it... I immediately felt sorry for him.<p>This was a desperate, dirty, homeless man with a smile on his face as the police dragged him away. He was probably just looking for some shelter to sleep that night.<p>The house that he &quot;broke into&quot; did admittedly look abandoned. And I found myself trying to justify the reasons that he might have tried to break into the house, rather than hating him silently.<p>All because I got a look at him.

After a two year period of watching my boss interact with people, I can confirm that this method works extremely well.<p>He is a &quot;natural&quot;, in the sense that he can form close bonds with people incredibly quickly. At first I thought he was using some sort of secret strategy, but after a while I noticed that he was simply sharing personal details about himself (which the article refers to as &quot;self-disclosure&quot;) without being prompted, which encourages, and in fact compels, the other side to reciprocate.<p>Here is an example conference call conversation from two weeks ago, in fact, in which we were chatting with a potential client to schedule a meeting. Bob is my boss:<p>--<p><i>Bob: Okay. Let&#x27;s have an in-person meeting next week. What day works best for you?<p>Client: How about Thursday at 2?<p>Bob: Sounds great. You know, I&#x27;m glad you didn&#x27;t say Wednesday because I have to be with my two little girls that day, and I definitely could not miss that. They mean the world to me.<p>Client: Oh yeah, I understand. In fact I can relate... I have a daughter myself!</i><p>--<p>And then when we actually met in person this past Thursday, the topic of their daughters was a natural conversation point.<p>In contrast, I tend to be fairly reserved when it comes to sharing personal info. I like to stay on topic and dislike what I perceive as derails. The above conversation for me would have gone like this:<p>--<p><i>Me: Okay. Let&#x27;s have an in-person meeting next week. What day works best for you?<p>Client: How about Thursday?<p>Me: Sounds great. See you on Thursday at 2 PM.</i><p>--<p>Similar, but also very different.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hpmor.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hpmor.com</a> ), Chapter 7:<p>&quot;&quot;&quot;<i>Draco giggled. &quot;Yeah, right. Anyway... to answer what you asked...&quot; Draco took a deep breath, and his face turned serious. &quot;Father once missed a Wizengamot vote for me. I was on a broom and I fell off and broke a lot of ribs. It really hurt. I&#x27;d never hurt that much before and I thought I was going to die. So Father missed this really important vote, because he was there by my bed at St. Mungo&#x27;s, holding my hands and promising me that I was going to be okay.&quot;</i><p><i>Harry glanced away uncomfortably, then, with an effort, forced himself to look back at Draco. &quot;Why are you telling me that? It seems sort of... private...&quot;</i><p><i>Draco gave Harry a serious look. &quot;One of my tutors once said that people form close friendships by knowing private things about each other, and the reason most people don&#x27;t make close friends is because they&#x27;re too embarrassed to share anything really important about themselves.&quot; Draco turned his palms out invitingly. &quot;Your turn?&quot;&quot;&quot;&quot;</i>

Word of warning: This is a social psychology study from 1997. There&#x27;s been a lot of evidence lately that social psychology the way it&#x27;s been done in the past is a huge mess and calling it pseudoscience isn&#x27;t that far off. The field is only at the beginning of cleaning up that mess.<p>Any study that old that hasn&#x27;t been replicated with rigorous scientific standards is about as valuable as a magazine horoscope.

<i>Does that mean that some close, naturally-forming relationships don&#x27;t get nurtured as lovingly as was achieved in a 45-minute conversation?</i><p>As one more random data point: I am a chatty extravert. Sometimes people imagine they are close to me when they are not.

Interesting how this psychology paper showed up in the context of &quot;making a friend.&quot; I had only known of this study as a way of creating romantic relationship, through a NYT Modern Love piece &quot;To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do this.&quot;<p>The method is hardly fast though - it requires two people to set aside a good chunk of time in a quiet setting to fully experience the gradual escalation of self-disclosure. When trying out this method in real life, what about the fact that you chose that one person to try this with? The reasons behind that choice would contribute much a successful result of this method but still left unexplained.

I can&#x27;t help but note that A. Aron was the lead writer. You done messed up!

You can see this played out every day in designated smoking areas. I&#x27;ve observed smokers tend to become friends quickly. As smoking is increasingly frowned upon, everybody who shows up in the smoking area is sort of opening up and sharing a weakness with the other smokers just by being there.

I think I might have permanently damaged my vision with that #FFF on #000 color scheme. I still see text floating in the air.

&quot;Low ego-identity makes same-sex pairs closer, high ego-identity makes cross-sex pairs closer&quot;<p>Perhaps this statement is true, but is the end goal for both parties the same?<p>For some reason, I find myself befriending mainly females (I am male). Yes, I have a high ego. However, I can never tell if the other person is interested in a friendship or something more. I always want to put them in the friend zone, but I have awkward situations in the recent past where these friends have either made subtle and not-so subtle advances. I am not interested in anything more than friendship. I do not want to lead anyone on. So yes, perhaps that pairing works well, but is friendship the goal?<p>In addition, males tend to bond during &quot;experiences&quot;, so what I have been seeking as of late is more male friendships. Other males are more inclined to go on multi-day backpacking adventures. According to this study, males with low-ego are likely to become friends, but I seek high ego&#x2F;high energy friends.

This is fascinating. I have for a long time been the introverted socially incompetent and weird (partially) one.<p>A lot of that has changed for me recently. Going to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for a year now and doing more yoga has really helped me to figure out a lot of traumatic issues from the past, especially with racism during childhood.<p>It&#x27;s really reduced my fear of socializing with people. I&#x27;m now somewhere in between extrovert and introvert and I&#x27;ve noticed that self-disclosure happens a lot more and interactions have improved with strangers. Even small talk happens now and then. I&#x27;ve always hated small talk.<p>I don&#x27;t like the extrovert&#x2F;introvert&#x2F;attachment type labelling though. Reading on them or discussing them with others has some kind of effect of boxing you in to self-limiting thought patterns. It can be a good starting point to figure things out, but I implore people to not think you&#x27;re stuck in your ways.

Not sure I agree that &quot;agreement on important issues&quot; should be on the &quot;things that don&#x27;t matter&quot; section.<p>I know that stuff in particular matters big time to me, even just for friends. My closest friends tend to see the world very similarly to me than people I am much less close with. In fact, more often than not I end up pruning out the people that think drastically differently than I do. Most of the time this just happens naturally because I tend to be more wary about what I say and talk about once I know someone is extremely different than me. My spidey sense puts me on high alert and I basically enter a super-PC, &quot;what every word that comes out of your mouth&quot; mode. Occasionally, I deliberately reduce interactions and they go from being a close friend to being just a casual friend or acquaintance.

Does anyone know what is meant by &quot;high ego identities&quot; and &quot;low ego identities?&quot;

Here&#x27;s the paper cited in the lower left corner of the graphic (and in the text above, I now see):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;psychodramaaustralia.edu.au&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;falling_in_love-aron.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;psychodramaaustralia.edu.au&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;fall...</a><p>which only caught my eye because of the &quot;A. Aron&quot; author. I&#x27;m almost certain this is the husband of Elaine Aron, who launched the identification, qualifier, and description of the &quot;Highly Sensitive Person&quot; (HSP).<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hsperson.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hsperson.com&#x2F;</a><p>Arthur&#x27;s paper is dated 1997, while Elaine&#x27;s first book on the HSP type was published in 1996. Which I find to be an interesting correlation in time.<p>More recently, Elaine has (in my limited knowledge) been focusing on the concept of &quot;ranking and [or, versus] linking&quot;.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psychologytoday.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;attending-the-undervalued-self&#x2F;201001&#x2F;ranking-and-linking-better-and-worse" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psychologytoday.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;attending-the-undervalu...</a><p>The OP topic here reminds me somewhat of her perspective on linking.

&quot;Low ego-identity makes same-sex pairs closer, high ego-identity makes cross-sex pairs closer&quot;<p>Can confirm. Over the years I minimised the amount of same sex friends in my life dramatically.

Oh come on. It&#x27;s not like anyone needs a lesson in these kinds of things.<p>&lt;bookmarks page&gt;

What were the gradually escalating intimate questions asked?

Personally, I find the recipe of kindness, honesty, laughter, generosity, loyalty, plus a bit of magic to be both practically effective and somewhat philosophically profound.

I read this as how to convince a friend to start intermittent fasting.

I clicked thinking this was about making a friend go without eating

Are there really &#x27;high-ego&#x27;&#x2F;&#x27;low-ego&#x27; individuals? Is it not a spectrum over time? Is it not controllable to some degree?<p>How is this different than toning down the ego a notch when trying to make platonic friends, while trying to be confident when looking to make romantic partners?

That reads like the instructions on pick-up artist forums.

White letters on black background... my eyes are still seeing those letters. Is it just me?

the author fails to mention that certain many things need to be in place first before you even have the first interaction that leads to potential close friendship...first impression elements such as streotype, prejudice, culture, assumptions, expectations, attraction, etc are all split second decisions we make that can affect how the interaction will go or if there is ever going to be interaction to begin with...the article completely ignores these aspects which are important specially in diverse multi cultural envrionments

That would be absolutely unreadable if not for firefox &quot;Reader View&quot; feature. Picture is still unreadable, of course.

&quot;<i>These manipulative geniuses chose a handful of university-level psychology classes early in the semester, divided the student volunteers (who didn&#x27;t know each other) in pairs, and asked them to engage in an exercise designed to increase their closeness.</i>&quot;<p>Psychology is the study of the psychology of psychology undergraduates.<p>&quot;<i>Those with dismissive-avoidant personalities didn&#x27;t get as close</i><p>&quot;<i>The dismissive-avoidant is one of the attachment types in the study of social attachment in adults. It pertains to people who feel more comfortable without close social relationships, highly value their independence, they suppress and hide their feelings, and deal with rejection by distancing themselves from its source. The other personality types in adult attachments include secure, and two other insecure types: anxious-preoccupied and fearful-avoidant. These three personality types all reported on a higher (and similar) level of closeness achieved than the dismissive-avoidants.</i>&quot;<p>Well, that lets me out, then.

Let me hazard a guess, study done mostly with American subjects and majority of them being white.<p>I would love to see a qualifier like &quot;How to make a friend fast in America?&quot;

I have seen so much information on the benefits of intermittent fasting lately, I interpreted this headline as &quot;How to stop a friend from eating&quot; =)

The flowchart in the beginning is very heteronormative. :(

I&#x27;d add one more question under Closeness-Generating Procedure: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

Does this person write their n&#x27;s and m&#x27;s upside down? I can barely read their handwriting, it&#x27;s really odd...<p>Does it say freud? I assume it&#x27;s meant to say friend...<p>Does it say watters? I&#x27;m assuming it&#x27;s trying to say matters?<p>It took me about a minute or two to deduce these meanings though...

lock them up and dont give them any food

What software was used to make this nice diagram?

Steal his lunch?

This reminds me of that scene in Silicon Valley where Bertram tells Dinesh he can make a friend just as good as his friend. Someone told me a while ago if you want to have a personal connection you have to be personable yourself and tell someone something honest and truthful. I&#x27;ve had much better luck since then. The middle box on this diagram is good advice.

Added to my daily flash cards

Things like this are why people laugh at Silicon Valley, this is a very aspie&#x2F;robotic approach to this topic.

Hmm, I guess &#x27;extrovert&#x27; is an acceptable spelling nowadays, even though it&#x27;s the wrong Latin root.