The Dynamic of Cross-Sex Platonic Friendships: How Perception Varies Among Gender

Back Story:

Morgan and I became friends because we sat at the same table in our Research Methods I class, which we dreaded going to. Class time quickly became filled with talk of what we liked to do and who we hung out with. Morgan shared that she had six guy best friends, and we bonded over that too since I had a guy best friend too.

Fast forward a semester, Morgan and I are sitting in the back row of Research Methods II, and we need to come up with something to research. In the process of racking our brains, conversations would often derail to what goofy things our guy friends had recently done. Then it clicked, we’d study girl-guy friendships.

Can men and women really just be friends? We thought yes, but does everyone see it like that?

Short Summary:

With all the proper consent forms, we created and sent out a survey asking for pairs of male-female platonic friends to respond. It was entirely anonymous. Pairs created a codeword only they two of them would know, and submitted it with their responses. This codeword is how we paired the two individuals together in our data. In total, we had 222 respondents. In this survey, we asked responders to complete a series of questions twice, once from their personal perspective, and the other time from what they believed their friend’s perspective was. Sample questions included:

  • On a scale of 1-10, what would you rate your friend on their physical attractiveness?

  • How close and connected do you feel to your friend in a non-romantic way?

  • Have you ever hooked up with/ been involved sexually in the past with your friend?

  • Have you ever had a crush or liked your friend in the past? (Without acting on it)

  • Would you like to be involved romantically with your friend in the future?

Figure One (below) is the data report from one question.

Overall, our percentage results showed that women had a more accurate idea of the men’s perception of the friendship. The results also supported previously known information that the male in the relationship is more likely to have romantic feelings than the female.

Figure 1

The data shown below is from the question “Have you ever had a crush or liked your friend in the past? (Without acting on it)”.