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Same-Sex Friendships

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

Synonyms

Cooperative alliances; Friendships

Definition

Same-sex friendship is a nonsexual and nonfamilial communal bond characterized by voluntary independence between two same-sex individuals.

Introduction

Friendship is a unique dyadic relationship that is not only cherished but also sought after for a variety of reasons in almost every culture studied. Not surprisingly, there is a word describing a relationship established outside the kin environment in nearly all cultures and languages. Even though some of these words share a common root with kin-relation words, they over time became uniquely associated with the idea of friendship (Krappman 1996).

One critical issue in defining friendship concerns the possible overlap with other relationships. The theorized lack of sexual relations between friends differentiates it from relationships specifically formed to address mate attraction and retention. Also, the idea of voluntary interdependence as one of the defining feature of friendship...

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Correspondence to Melikşah Demir .

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Demir, M., Chiverton, L. (2017). Same-Sex Friendships. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1610-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1610-1

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