[Hot] How to make a new best friend 2026

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Article:
Never underestimate the power of simply reaching out.";"How to Be a Good Friend
Not Just an Acquaintance. These five useful approaches can help you move past being a casual acquaintance. Key points.

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Making friends is like learning to play a piano—the more hours you put in
the better you get. You’ll be regarded as a better friend if you put away the cell phone and be an attentive listener. Simply reaching out to make contact is appreciated more than most of us might guess. Across societies around the world
a key feature of friendship is helping one another out. The author with his two friends Bob Cialdini and Steve Neuberg
laughing over one of hundreds of meals they have shared over several decades
they were of course once strangers. What would you be doing if you were trying to find meaning in life? When Jaimie Krems
Becca Neel
and I asked 565 men and women that question
the most common response was that a meaningful life would involve spending time with friends. And when Dunigan Folk and Elizabeth Dunn analyzed the results of 48 rigorously conducted studies on happiness
the data revealed that spending more time with friends was one of the most reliable predictors of happiness. Close friends are connected to a happy and meaningful life. But what if you’ve recently moved to a new place
taken a new job
your closest friends have all gone off to college
and you’re not naturally extraverted? Is there anything you can do to make stronger connections with other people who can be so important to enhancing your positive feelings and meaning in life? In my last post
I discussed three techniques for breaking the ice: for moving from being a complete stranger to being a familiar acquaintance. But mere acquaintances are unlikely to be the source of deep personal fulfilment
we need a few real friends. Psychologists have conducted thousands of studies of the features people find desirable in friends (such as similarity)
the personality traits associated with having fewer or more friends (such as social anxiety)
and the psychological consequences of loneliness and isolation. But those studies don’t usually explicitly spell out the practical advice about how
the specific approaches people can use to move from social isolation through initial acquaintance to close friendship. If you dig
you can find a few useful strategies buried in all that research. Here are five of them: Spend time together. Jeffrey A. Hall surveyed 429 people who had recently moved over 50 miles from their previous residence. They were asked to name someone they had met since moving
and to report on the number of hours they had spent with that person. For every 10 hours spent together
there was approximately a 4 percent increase in the likelihood of calling that person a friend rather than a casual acquaintance. People began to move from acquaintance to casual friend after spending around 30 hours together. It took at least 140 hours together to become a close friend
and it takes at least 300 hours together before someone is defined as a best friend. It also mattered what people did during those hours together. Hall found that small talk (about sports
TV
or pets
for example) was not as good a predictor of becoming friends as what he called “striving” conversations—including catching up on what’s been happening to one another
discussions about serious or personal topics
playful joking around
or expressions of attention and affection. Be a responsive listener. What if you are having one of those striving conversations
perhaps about something that happened to you at work yesterday
and the person you are talking to keeps glancing down at their cell phone? It’s unlikely you will look forward to the next conversation with them. Yohsuke Ohtsubo and colleagues found that when you are paying attention to what your conversation partner is saying
they feel understood
accepted
and cared for. How do you make it obvious you are paying attention? Making appropriate eye contact is one signal. Simply moving in synch with the other person (nodding when they do
or adopting a complementary posture) increases the chances that they'll feel similar to you
and enjoy the conversation (Chartrand and Bargh
1996). Open up. In a series of studies
Charles Truax and Robert Carkhuff found that the best psychotherapists were perceived by their clients as genuine (or authentic)
empathetic (understanding and sharing the client’s feelings)
and respectful (in the sense of accepting the client unconditionally and nonjudgmentally). The same is true of good friends
except that
unlike a therapeutic relationship
friendships are completely reciprocal. Before you can genuinely accept one another
you need to disclose important things about yourselves. Valerian Derlega and colleagues found that
when people do not know one another well
they tend to match the other person’s level of self-disclosure. Once you know one another
it’s a lot easier to open up about yourself
and one doesn't want to jump right into the deepest darkest reaches of one’s soul during the first 15 minutes of a conversation with a new acquaintance. But because meaningful conversation is a hallmark of a true friendship
someone has to start somewhere. How you respond when your friend shares information about themselves also matters. Relationship experts Shelly Gable and Harry Reis talk about how people can “capitalize” on positive events by responding enthusiastically when someone shares good news with them. Your enthusiasm is taken as evidence that you care about them and identify with them. If your reaction is unenthusiastic or negative
though
it is taken as evidence that you're not on their team. Don’t underestimate the power of simply reaching out . Socially anxious people don’t reach out to others because they have negative expectations about how others will respond (Cacioppo and colleagues
2015). If you think others will not welcome your contacts
it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
you never reach out and never close the social distance. Peggy Liu and colleagues asked 109 students to write a short note to someone in their social circle
simply to “check in and say hello.” The students were asked to estimate how much the recipient would appreciate being reached out to. Then the researchers delivered the notes and asked the recipients how much they appreciated them. The researchers found that people reliably underestimate the positive effect of simply reaching out: Recipients enjoyed the notes much more than the senders had expected. Be helpful . Anthropologist Dan Hruschka examined friendships across 60 societies around the globe. Whether those societies were composed of hunter-gatherers
farmers
or urban commuters
one feature of friendship was universal: Friends help one another out. In traditional societies
this often involved sharing food or tools
or helping one another build a hut. In the modern world
sharing food is still a great way to go (everyone loves the person who brings a tray of brownies). But you can also help your new acquaintance by assisting with a class assignment
offering a ride when their car is in the shop
or simply providing information you have but they need (like how to log on to one of those #*%!# user-unfriendly websites). Facebook image: we.bond.creations/Shutterstock. Cacioppo
S. Grippo
A. J. London
S. Goossens
L. & Cacioppo
J. T. (2015). Loneliness: Clinical import and interventions. Perspectives on psychological science
10 (2)
238-249. Chartrand T.L. Bargh J.A. (1999).













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