The Future of Friendship Research
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 and evolutionary anthropology, and animal behavior.
Understanding how friendship works is the first, necessary step toward promoting empirically-backed interventions that stand to improve the health, happiness, and flourishing of people around the world.
Some of the ongoing work by Center faculty and graduate students asks:
What is going on in the brain when people "click" with each other?
Do people compete for friends, and how do they do it?
In what ways do friendships combat loneliness (and boost health outcomes)?
Can we use neuroimaging to predict which people will become friends?
How can we foster friendships among people working together?
How can we help people make meaningful connections at school, work, and in our communities?
How do friendships + shared experiences affect the brain?
How to friendships help us regulate our emotions?
Can we help lonely people find and form meaningful friendships?
What behaviors are deployed when people encounter conflicts in their friendships?
Do we stigmatize people who lack friends, and how can we combat negative behavior toward such "friend singles"?
How do acts of kindness toward the self verus others influence well-being?
How do people maintain their friendships?
