Center faculty and students tackle key questions about friendship, leveraging theory and methods from social psychology, social and affective neuroscience, social network studies, computer science, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and animal behavior.

We tackle questions like: How do people find, make, and keep friends? What is the mental architecture necessary to encode the structure of our social networks, and how does this architecture help us navigate those networks? What is the computational design of human friendship psychology? Can we use empirical science to create lasting, satisfying friendships?

Understanding how friendship works is the first, necessary step toward promoting empirically-backed interventions that will improve the health, happiness, and flourishing of millions of people around the world.

Communicating the science of friendship is a key part of the Center's mission. We plan to work with industry professionals—and our students—to disseminate friendship research broadly.

Want to talk to a friendship expert?

Our faculty regularly speak with the media, industry, and other professionals about the science of friendship. Get in touch.