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Absence of Events to Distinguish True Friends

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Synonyms

Events; Friends; Friendships; Reciprocal altruism

Definition

The evolutionary perspective argues that we have evolved to monitor events that would help identify true friends. These events are usually harsh or unfavorable, which are absent in our safer and more stable modern environments.

Introduction

Friendship confers many adaptive benefits that aid survival and reproduction (Buss 1989; Lewis et al. 2011; Tooby and DeVore 1987), especially in successfully distinguishing between true friends and fair-weather ones. However, with modern environments and tools, it is challenging to discern the different types of friends. This current entry reviews the benefits of friendship and outlines how modern context influences our evolved psychology in identifying true friends.

Benefits of Friendships

Ancestrally, friendships provided humans with benefits that aided survival (Cosmides and Tooby 1992; Lewis et al. 2011; Tooby and DeVore 1987). Being in groups allowed hunters to work...

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Correspondence to Amy J. Lim .

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© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Lim, H.L.L., Lim, A.J. (2020). Absence of Events to Distinguish True Friends. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1581-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1581-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Absence of Events to Distinguish True Friends
    Published:
    15 May 2020

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1581-2

  2. Original

    Absence of Events to Distinguish True Friends
    Published:
    21 February 2020

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1581-1