This week’s reading about how social psychology relates to our personal relationships naturally had me thinking about the people in my life and how they came to be there. For many of us, we can remember how and where we met people; but, what made us go from complete strangers to close friends? What forces led to this immaculate connection that for many, is shared for a lifetime? As we came to learn in our chapter reading, there are many factors that influence relationships. In reflection, the proximity effect has certainly had a grand pull on my development of friendships.
The proximity effect states that when people spend more time together in close spaces, they are more likely to form a bond and affinity towards one another (Gruman, Schneider, & Coutts, 2016). This is because the close proximity offers opportunities to get to know one another and find common interests. The chapter reading mentioned the likelihood of having childhood best friends with last names that start with the same letter as your own, due to possible seating arrangements that were made during class. While this is less accurate for me, as I grew up with the unpopular letter “Z” as my last initial, I did think back to my childhood and the friends that I had.
Most of my friends growing up, and the friends that have stuck by my side into adulthood, are those that I grew up with in my neighborhood. About 20% of my wedding attendants were childhood neighbors of mine! I think that this had a great deal to do with the fact that we grew up living so close to one another, that it was hard not to become close in friendship. If we think about seating arrangements in class, a similar explanation could be bus seating in elementary school. Rather than being seated by the last name, we were always seated by the bus stop. At the beginning of the school year, this was typically assigned for us, however as the year progressed most students stuck with these assigned seats even after we were told we could choose freely where to sit.
I can also apply this proximity effect to my current group of friends. As a full-time student and full-time employee, it stands to reason that my social life is not necessarily flourishing. I do not go out much, however, most of the friends that I do hang out with are people that I work with. I am very different from these individuals. So much so, that I don’t think we would be friends if it weren’t for the fact that we work together in the same office five days a week. In fact, this rings true for the past few jobs I have had, which is very interesting!
Reference
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
I agree that most relationships begin with physical proximity, it allows one to spend more time together or meet more frequently. As people spend more time together, they can quickly familiarize themselves with one another and find similarities or common interests. Similar to your story, I met most of my best friends during elementary school and continued our relationship until now. I feel happy and comfortable when I am around them, and I can always talk about anything without feeling any emotional distance. I think this was possible because we lived very close to each other and spent most of our days together since we were young. However, I do not believe that it was our physical proximity that made us best friends. Instead, I liked my friends because they had beautiful personalities, were nice and fun, and shared common interests with me. According to our lecture, studies have found that the more contact we have with unpleasant or dislikable people, the more we will dislike them—this is referred to as environmental spoiling (Ebbeson et al., 1976). Another study also found that increased exposure and contact with someone generally increases preexisting feelings, whether they are positive or negative, toward that person (Zajonc, 1968). These findings show that I might have initially liked my best friends when I first met them, and I liked them even more as we spent more time together.
References
Ebbeson, E. B., Kjos, G. L., & Konecni, V. J. (1976). Spatial ecology: Its effects on the choice of friends and enemies. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 12, 505–518.
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and social psychology, 9(2, Part 2), 1–27.
Hey there! This is an interesting article. I agree with your statement about the proximity effect. It certainly helped me find my best friend. My best friend and I met in 7th grade gym class. At that moment, I didn’t know she was going to be my lifelong friend, but I guess when you’re stuck with the same people day in and day out, you start to like them! Now she lives in Central America. I visit her family every year. Although the proximity effect no longer exists for our friendship, it certainly helped bring us together.
Aside from my personal lived experiences, there’s also research that backs up your claim. A research study done in 1975 by Nahemow and Lawton states, “friendships between people of different ages and races were found almost exclusively among those who lived very close to one another.” This is quite interesting to me. Maybe people feel safer to engage with other people who are different from them if there is physical closeness. If so, this is profound. This may be a solution to bringing people closer together. In addition the class notes state that “when it comes to deeper relationships (such as strong friendships or romantic relationships) it is easier to communicate and work with someone when they think and act like oneself.” Proximity and similarity might be the two pieces of the puzzle we need to bring people of different backgrounds (but similar mindsets) together. Could you imagine the social power in that?
References
Nahemow, L., & Lawton, M. P. (1975). Similarity and propinquity in friendship formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(2), 205–213. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.32.2.205