New research reveals friends students want versus the friends they actually make

A recent study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships suggests that the peers young adolescents want to be friends with are often highly popular and attractive, but these aspirational friendships rarely become a reality. The findings indicate that youth aim to befriend high-status classmates, yet they actually have much more in common with their existing friends. This lack of similarity tends to prevent idealized new friendships from taking root.

Friendships offer emotional support, protection, and companionship, playing a large role in a young person’s social and academic well-being. But the motives behind how youth select the friends they desire are not entirely understood. In adult romantic relationships, people often desire partners who represent an unattainable ideal rather than someone who is similar to them.

Social scientists suspected a similar pattern might occur when young adolescents identify desired friends. “Researchers know a great deal about the friends young people already have, but surprisingly little about the people they want as friends,” said Brett Laursen, a professor of psychology and director of graduate studies at Florida Atlantic University.

Laursen, who is also the editor-in-chief of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly and editor of Cambridge Elements in Research Methods for Developmental Science, noted that the team wanted to see if youth select peers based on compatibility or high status. “We were interested in whether desired friends represent realistic prospective relationships or more aspirational ideals,” Laursen explained. “In particular, we wanted to know whether young adolescents tend to select peers with whom they are compatible or gravitate toward especially desirable peers, even when those relationships may be unlikely to develop.”

Desired friends are classmates a student would like to form a friendship with, distinct from the friends they already have. The concept resembles how adults evaluate ideal romantic partners. People hold abstract standards for the qualities they want in a relationship, often looking for a mixture of warmth, attractiveness, and social standing.

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Some past studies have tried to measure desired friendships by looking at unreciprocated friends, which happen when one student names a peer as a friend but the peer does not name them back. The authors of the current study chose not to use this method. They argue that unreciprocated friendships often represent misunderstandings or simple memory errors. Instead, they asked students directly who they wanted to befriend.

Previous models of social behavior provide evidence for two different strategies when people seek out new relationships. The first strategy focuses on personal gain through self-expansion, where individuals try to connect with higher-status peers to boost their own social standing. The second strategy focuses on compatibility and shared traits, as bonding with peers who share similar attitudes tends to be easier and more realistic.

To explore these social dynamics, the authors tracked 725 young adolescents across a single academic school year. The project included two separate studies, both utilizing longitudinal data. This means the researchers collected information from the same participants at two different points in time, allowing them to see how relationships changed.

The first study included 279 fifth and sixth graders from a public school in South Florida, with an average age of about eleven years old. The researchers surveyed the students in the winter and then again in the spring. During the surveys, students identified up to ten classmates they wanted to become friends with, as well as up to ten existing friends.

The students also nominated classmates who fit specific social descriptions. These peer reputation categories included academic achievement, fun, popularity, and unpopularity. This allowed the scientists to measure the social status and personal attributes of both the participating students and the specific peers they desired as friends.

The second study expanded on the first by including 219 middle school students from South Florida and 227 middle school students from Lithuania. These participants, who were between ten and fourteen years old, completed surveys in the fall and the spring. An enrollment lottery system in the Florida schools ensured that the student population represented the surrounding community in terms of ethnicity and family income.

The locations also offered slightly different educational environments. The Lithuanian students kept the same teachers and classmates throughout the entire school day. In contrast, the students in the United States attended classes with a rotating group of peers from a larger shared group.

In this second study, the survey included two additional peer reputation categories. Students were asked to nominate classmates who were highly athletic and classmates who were considered good-looking. As in the first study, participants also listed their current friends and the peers they wanted to befriend.

When analyzing the data, the scientists found that very few desired friendships ever materialized. Across both studies, only a tiny fraction of desired friends became actual, reciprocated friends by the second survey point. A reciprocated friendship occurs when both students list each other as friends on the survey.

This low success rate caught the research team off guard. “We were particularly surprised by how few desired friends later became mutual friends,” Laursen told PsyPost. “Only about 5% of these aspirations preceded the formation of a reciprocated friendship later in the school year.”

The trend held steady regardless of the different environments. “What made that finding especially striking was its consistency across studies that differed in participants’ ages, school settings, locations, and nomination procedures,” Laursen added. “Despite those differences, the same general pattern emerged, giving us greater confidence that the finding was not unique to one particular school or group of adolescents.”

The peers nominated as desired friends had significantly different traits than the rest of the student body. Those desired as friends scored higher in academic achievement, athleticism, attractiveness, fun, and popularity than students who were not desired as friends. They also scored lower in unpopularity, showing a strong trend toward positive social standing.

Being highly desired as a friend involved more than just basic popularity. “One important distinction is that being desired as a friend was not simply another way of being popular,” Laursen explained. “Popular classmates were somewhat more likely to be desired, but popularity explained only part of the pattern.”

These aspirational targets possessed a wide range of positive attributes. “Desired friends also tended to be viewed favorably in other ways: fun, attractive, athletic, or academically successful,” Laursen noted. “Popularity is often treated as though it captures everything that makes a peer socially desirable, but our findings suggest that friendship aspirations are more multidimensional. Young people appear to respond to a broader combination of qualities that make another person seem appealing, rewarding, or admirable.”

To understand why these friendships failed to form, the researchers looked at how similar the students were to their desired targets. They measured similarity by comparing the social reputation scores of the nominating student and the student they wanted to befriend. Statistical tools allowed the researchers to see if traits matched up within these potential pairs.

The findings reveal that students were not very similar to their desired friends. In contrast, students shared a high degree of similarity with their existing friends. Existing friends shared similar levels of athleticism, attractiveness, popularity, and academic success, whereas desired friends were usually far out of reach.

Laursen pointed out that a person’s initial appeal does not guarantee a successful connection. “The broader takeaway is that what makes someone appealing from a distance may not be what makes a friendship likely to form,” he said. “Friendship aspirations seem to emphasize socially valued qualities, whereas actual friendships may depend more heavily on compatibility, shared characteristics, and opportunities for mutually rewarding interaction.”

This lack of compatibility provides a likely explanation for why the aspirational friendships rarely turned into genuine relationships. “The practical significance lies in the distinction between admiring someone and being well matched for a friendship,” Laursen explained. “Young people may be especially drawn to peers who seem impressive, fun, attractive, or socially successful, but those qualities do not necessarily create the common ground or mutual interest needed for a friendship to develop.”

These findings have practical applications for parents and teachers. Prioritizing aspirational relationships over realistic ones might interfere with the formation of meaningful close relationships for some children. Interventions aimed at assisting friendless youth could focus on providing opportunities for shared activities with compatible peers.

“For parents, teachers, or counselors helping a young person form friendships, the findings suggest that it may be useful to create repeated, low-pressure opportunities for interaction with peers who share interests or activities,” Laursen said. He also noted that “the study does not show that aspiring to befriend highly desirable peers is harmful, but it does suggest that social appeal and friendship potential are not always the same thing.”

It is easy to assume that all failed friendship attempts result in severe emotional distress for the student. The data does not measure how students feel when a desired friendship fails to form. It is possible that youth view these nominations as a fantasy or a best-case scenario rather than a realistic interpersonal goal, meaning they might not experience deep disappointment.

The researchers could not determine exactly why students chose specific peers as desired friends. “We do not know exactly what young people meant when they identified someone as a desired friend,” Laursen said. “They may have been naming someone they genuinely hoped to approach, someone they admired from a distance, or simply their ideal choice if anything were possible.”

Without asking the participants directly about their motives, the scientists can only infer that the students were drawn to the high status of their peers. “Because we did not directly assess their motivations or expectations, we cannot conclude that these nominations reflected deliberate attempts to improve social status,” Laursen added. “We also did not test whether unfulfilled friendship aspirations caused disappointment or affected participants’ existing friendships.”

Another potential explanation for the findings involves cognitive shortcuts. Psychologists use the term availability heuristic to describe how people rely on immediate examples that come to mind. Highly popular youth are socially central and highly visible, so it is possible that students nominated them simply because those names were easiest to remember.

The study has a few limitations that warrant consideration. The instructions for nominating desired friends varied slightly between the two studies. In the first study, some students accidentally nominated peers who were already their friends, which required the researchers to adjust the data. Still, the statistical trends remained consistent across both groups.

Future research could include direct interviews to ask adolescents why they desire certain friendships. “A central next step is to ask young people more directly why they want particular peers as friends and what they expect those relationships to become,” Laursen explained. “This would help distinguish realistic friendship goals from admiration, idealization, or more general social aspirations.”

The research team also hopes to explore the rare cases where these aspirational friendships succeed. “We would also like to understand what distinguishes the small number of desired friendships that do become mutual,” Laursen said. “Those relationships may involve greater compatibility, more opportunities for interaction, or stronger reciprocal interest.”

Following these adolescents over longer periods could reveal how social goals impact mental health. “Over the longer term, it will be important to examine whether repeated unfulfilled aspirations shape satisfaction with existing friendships, self-worth, loneliness, or later friendship choices,” Laursen concluded.

The study, “The Friends They Have and the Friends They Want: Why Friendship Aspirations Usually Fail,” was authored by Lucinda Sherrod, Molly Selover, Gilly Kahn, Goda Kaniušonytė, and Brett Laursen.