Teenage boys with empathy have 1.8 more female friends than those without

A new study is calling into question the idea that “Nice guys finish last” as researchers from Australia have found empathetic boys attracted 1.8 more friendships with female peers than less empathetic boys.

Published in the Journal of Personality, the new study is based on survey responses from nearly 2,000 Australian high school students.

Volunteers were asked to name up to five of their closest male and five closest female friends in the same class year. Participants asked questions like, “when someone is feeling down, I can usually understand how they feel,” and “I can often understand how people are feeling even before they tell me.”

Student volunteers were also asked to complete the sentence “My close friend(s)…”, with options like: “helps me when I need it,” “spends time with me when I’m lonely,” “accepts me when I make a mistake,” “calms me down when I’m nervous about something,” “understands my feelings,” and “explains things when I’m confused.”

In addition to finding empathetic boys scored higher on friendship ratings than their less empathetic male peers, the researchers also found empathetic girls didn’t see the same benefit with respect to young boys. Actually, the study highly-empathetic girls “did not attract a greater number of opposite sex friends” at all.

Peer support is crucial in relationships

These empathetic girls reported they still felt a significant amount of support from friends.

“The more friendship nominations a boy received from either boys or girls, the more they felt supported by their friends; the number of friendship nominations received by girls, in contrast, had no effect on their felt support by friends,” study author Joseph Ciarrochi, from the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at Australian Catholic University, said in a news release. “Regardless of the quantity of friendship nominations, empathy was linked to more supportive friendships for both males and females.”

Ciarrochi added that friendship are necessary for positive adolescent development.

“It’s well established that in addition to providing companionship, close friendships promote the development of interpersonal skills, learning, and growth,” he said. “Having friends has also been linked with lower rates of depression and, to people feeling good about themselves.

“This research suggests it is critical to identify and teach young people the skills they need to develop supportive friendships. To that end, our study provides a contextual understanding of the role of empathy in selecting and maintaining friendships,” Ciarrochi said.

—–

Image credit: Thinkstock

The post Teenage boys with empathy have 1.8 more female friends than those without appeared first on Redorbit.

redOrbit.com
offers Science, Space, Technology, Health news, videos, images and reference information. For the latest science news, space news, technology news, health news visit redOrbit.com frequently. Learn something new every day.”