Do People Get the Friends They Want? A Cross-Cultural Investigation

People desire friends who have qualities such as similarity, the ability to provide support, opportunities for socialisation, assistance in achieving self-serving goals and access to potential mates. In the current study, we aimed to examine the degree of overlap between the friends people consider ideal and those they actually have. Using a sample of 6224 participants from 12 countries, we found that, across five dimensions of friendship, ideal and actual friendships considerably overlapped and ideal preferences were significant and strong predictors of actual friendships. Still, the overlap between ideal and actual friendships was not complete; rather, a small deficit emerged, with participants getting less of what they wanted. These results were consistent across the 12 countries in our sample. We also found significant effects of the Dark Triad personality traits on several dimensions of friendship.