Diverse friendship formation

What is it about?

We surveyed relationship pairs in two neighborhoods of Boston, to research how people's beliefs about diversity relate to their friendship choices. We found that people who say they value diversity more are indeed more likely to have diverse friends, defined in our study as friends who hold different attitudes and values.

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Why is it important?

Most of the research on diverse friendship formation looks only at interracial friendship. Our study looks at diversity of attitudes and values as a unique way of defining friendship diversity. We propose that having friends who hold different attitudes and values from our own can contribute to the goal of improving intergroup relations; thus our research seeks to understand the factors that facilitate the formation of attitudinally diverse friendships.