Us against the world

A couple weeks ago, I was catching up with a friend from my program as we drove to a company event. As with most of our topics of conversation, this particular one came out of nowhere. I consider you one of my really close friends. But you know, if I had just met you at a random party, I don't think we'd be friends, he stated, matter-of-factly. Excuse me? I was a little taken aback but more just curious for the explanation that was bound to follow. I just mean that when our class began with the company, we were all starting a new experience together. Most of us had just graduated college and were entering the corporate world. Sharing that experience just made us closer than we would have been otherwise.  At that moment, I couldn't decide whether or not I agreed.

This past week, the CEO of our company spoke to members of our program. When asked what types of relationships we should establish early in our career, he became serious. Build relationships with your peers. That's it. Not your boss, not well, anyone else. Your peers, I'll stop there. Your peers are the ones who are having the exact same experiences as you. You turn to each other to celebrate and times of need and they're the ones that understand you the best. And those who have the strongest relationships with their peers are the ones that also find themselves being promoted and succeeding.

A widely-accepted phenomenon of social psychology, the mere expose effect explains that we prefer things or people that are familiar to us. Simply seeing a person (an acquaintance or even a stranger) will increase our rating of how likable or attractive the person is. In spending some time researching the idea of shared experiences, I found evidence to show that the mere exposure effect plays a huge role. Baumeister and Bushman's Social Psychology and Human Nature explains, "An extension of the mere exposure effect involves shared experiences. For example many years from now in some far-off place you may meet a stranger and discover during the conversation that the two of you attended the same college or had the same kind of pet. Logically, there is little reason this should promote liking, but the odds are that you and this person will begin to have friendly feelings towards each other based on this shared experience." And ready for the kicker? This is even true when the shared experience was a negative one. There's something about feeling a connection that promotes favorability. There's a comfort.

So shouldn't meeting a person at a party and hitting it off with great conversation lead to the same end-result of close friendship? Merely meeting someone at a party might not instigate a lifelong friendship. But having a conversation that uncovers some similarity or even a tangentially shared experience (like the example of the same type of dog) may do the trick.

My friend and I did not go to the same college and do not have the same type of pet. However, we both did study abroad in France during college, a fact that he never fails to mention within the first ten seconds of meeting someone. So while he may have been right in saying that we wouldn't have become close friends so quickly by simply meeting at a party, I'd like to argue that there may have still been some potential.

My freshman year roommate and I, in bonding over our new college life, quickly became close friends. But more than just bonding over a shared experience, it turned out that we had a similar sense of humor (and style), and similar likes and dislikes. We ended up living together for all four years and both graduated with a degree in psychology. The shared experience was just a facilitator, but it was the personalities that solidified the friendship. I have enough examples of people who never again spoke to their freshman year roommates to know this is true.

I'll end by saying that I half-agree with my friend's assessment of our friendship. A shared experience, though a good indicator, does not a friend make. As we go through life pursuing the various opportunities and interesting experiences presented to us, our most important consideration should be the types of people who'll be joining us on the journey. Because it's those relationships that will live on long after your shared experience has come to an end.