(Accidentally deleted comment; the main idea was that friendships come from growing up together, or doing some growth activity together, and that’s why it’s harder to get friends as an adult unless you’re taking some kind of class.)
I was overcomplicating things. The answer is much simpler: friendships are the result of a shared stressor, and they last as long as the stressor lasts. Yesterday I was standing in line to the US embassy, it was moving kinda slow with lots of delays. So I just started talking to the people next to me, and soon the whole queue was chatting with each other. Then we all in turn got our visa interviews and left the embassy without saying a word to each other. A microcosm of school friendships. That’s probably also why many couples break up when children leave the home.
So the problem here is that obviously there will be huge numbers of counter-exceptions to your proposed rule. Essentially while your rule probably has some predictive power—if you could passively observe thousands of humans interacting your rule might predict friendships better than chance—most likely there’s a better rule. You might need invasive brain data-loggers to find it but such a rule probably exists.
There are most likely sequences of inputs that cause most human brains to become receptive to new friendships.
Or maybe it’s a matter of logistics—you obviously can’t really form friendships with people you only are in proximity with briefly.
Childhood, a certain fraction of your elementary school class will be the same individuals all the way to senior year of high school. Hence, more years in proximity = stronger friendships. College is much shorter duration. In many workplaces, the economics encourage frequent job switches (about every 1.5 − 4 years is what the rules of the game call for), making such lasting interactions less likely.
And then there’s the fact that with limited cognitive resources, you can only maintain so many friendships and probably won’t invest in a new one if your older ones are still active. Thus the probability of a friendship would be higher in childhood because you don’t already have as many friends.
(Accidentally deleted comment; the main idea was that friendships come from growing up together, or doing some growth activity together, and that’s why it’s harder to get friends as an adult unless you’re taking some kind of class.)
I was overcomplicating things. The answer is much simpler: friendships are the result of a shared stressor, and they last as long as the stressor lasts. Yesterday I was standing in line to the US embassy, it was moving kinda slow with lots of delays. So I just started talking to the people next to me, and soon the whole queue was chatting with each other. Then we all in turn got our visa interviews and left the embassy without saying a word to each other. A microcosm of school friendships. That’s probably also why many couples break up when children leave the home.
So the problem here is that obviously there will be huge numbers of counter-exceptions to your proposed rule. Essentially while your rule probably has some predictive power—if you could passively observe thousands of humans interacting your rule might predict friendships better than chance—most likely there’s a better rule. You might need invasive brain data-loggers to find it but such a rule probably exists.
There are most likely sequences of inputs that cause most human brains to become receptive to new friendships.
Or maybe it’s a matter of logistics—you obviously can’t really form friendships with people you only are in proximity with briefly.
Childhood, a certain fraction of your elementary school class will be the same individuals all the way to senior year of high school. Hence, more years in proximity = stronger friendships. College is much shorter duration. In many workplaces, the economics encourage frequent job switches (about every 1.5 − 4 years is what the rules of the game call for), making such lasting interactions less likely.
And then there’s the fact that with limited cognitive resources, you can only maintain so many friendships and probably won’t invest in a new one if your older ones are still active. Thus the probability of a friendship would be higher in childhood because you don’t already have as many friends.