Just Friends? Guys Reveal Sexual Interest in Gal Pals

Can men and women be “just friends?” A new study suggests the answer is yes—but guys may be more attracted to their gal friends than vice versa.

男人和女人可能“只做朋友”嗎？一項新的研究表明，答案是肯定的——但男性或許比女性更容易對男女友誼產生浪漫想法。

Men report more sexual interest in their female friends than their female friends do in them, and men are also more likely than women to overestimate how romantically interested their friends are in them. In most cases,sexual attraction within a friendship is seen as more of a burden than a bene fi t,the study fi nds.

[2] “I think men and women do want to be friends, they do want to engage in platonic friendships,” said study researcher April Bleske-Rechek, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. “But the data I’ve been collecting suggests that attractions can get in the way.”

相較于女性對其男性朋友，男性更容易對其女性朋友產生好感，而且，男性比女性更容易高估對方對自己的興趣。研究發現，大多數情況下，友誼中的曖昧更多地被視作負擔，而非好事。

[2]威斯康星大學歐克萊爾分校的心理學家阿普麗爾·布萊斯克-雷歇克參與了這項研究，她說：“我認為男人和女人確實想做朋友，也確實想要柏拉圖式的友誼，但我所收集的數據顯示，這可能會受到曖昧情愫的阻礙。”

Friends without bene fi ts

[3] Friendship is an interesting area to study because it doesn’t have obvious reproductive advantages, Bleske-Rechek told LiveScience. Evolutionary psychologists often focus on sexual relationships and familial relationships, under the assumption that humans evolved to pass on their own genes to the next generation. But friends don’t share genetic ties or offspring, and yet they still help each other out.

[4] Bleske-Rechek and her colleagues were interested in how heterosexual,opposite-sex friends dealt with issues of sexual attraction that might come up in their friendships. First, they recruited 88 pairs of opposite-sex college-age friends to fill out questionnaires about their friendship. The researchers had pairs of friends come in so they could be sure that each member of the pair agreed that they were in a friendship,preventing one-sided relationships from muddying the waters.

[5] The participants separately answered questions about their friendship,including their levels of attraction to one another. To discourage pressure to share the answers later, the researchers instructed the friends to keep their answers con fi dential, even after the study.

單純的男女朋友

[3]布萊斯克-雷歇克告訴“生命科學”網站，友情是一個很有趣的研究領域，因為這種關系不具備明顯的繁殖優勢。進化心理學家們常常專注于兩性關系和親緣關系，因為他們假設人類的進化是將自己的基因一代傳一代。但是，朋友之間并沒有血緣關系，也沒有共同的后代，而他們仍然會在彼此遭遇困難時伸手相助。

[4]布萊斯克-雷歇克和她的同事們對異性朋友（均為異性戀者）之間如何處理友情中可能出現的愛戀情感很感興趣。首先，他們找來88對大學生年紀的異性朋友填寫有關他們友情的調查問卷。找來成對的異性朋友是為了確保雙方都認可兩人之間的友誼，防止一廂情愿的情形干擾調查結果。

[5]每對參與者分開回答關于他們友情的問題，包括自己被對方吸引的程度。為了不讓兩人有過后互通答案的顧慮，研究人員要求他們對答案進行保密，研究結束后也不能公布。

[6] The results revealed that men are more attracted to their female friends than their female friends are to them.Such overestimating of women’s interest is not unusual for men, Bleske-Rechek said.

Attraction to friends

[7] Men who were romantically involved were no less likely than single guys to say they found their female friend attractive or to say they’d like to go on a date with her. Women who were romantically involved were also equally as likely as single gals to be attracted to their male friends, but they drew the line at dating, with fewer women in relationships saying they’d date their guy friend.

[8] The researchers next wanted to expand their findings outside the college student realm, so they sent questionnaires 107 young adults ages 18 to 23 and 322 adults between the ages of 27 and 55. In these questionnaires, participants were asked about their crosssex friendships and were given the opportunity to list their own reasons why those friendships were both beneficial and burdensome.

[6]結果顯示，男性更容易著迷于女性朋友。布萊斯克-雷歇克說，男人高估女人對自己的興趣，這并不罕見。

愛上自己的朋友

[7]有女朋友的男性和單身男性一樣容易對他們的女性朋友產生好感或產生和對方約會的念頭。有男朋友的女性也和單身女孩一樣容易對其男性朋友產生好感，但她們會適可而止，自己有伴侶卻還說想跟異性朋友約會的女性較少。

[8]下一步，研究人員想把研究擴展到大學生群體之外，他們將問卷發給了107個18～23歲的年輕人和322個27～55歲的成年人。問題涉及被試的異性友情，被試可以列出理由，說明為什么這些友情既令人受益又讓人疲憊。

[9]調查發現，年長成人相比于年輕成人，異性朋友更少，但是，所有人都積極看待這種友情，認為絕大多數情況下這是有益的。但人們在填表時，幾乎總是把對異性朋友產生好感列入異性友情“損失和收益”中的“損失”一欄。研究人員在4月25日的《社會和人際關系》雜志上撰寫報告稱，調查中，幾乎一半的年輕成人主動將對異性朋友產生好感當成影響友誼的一個問題。

[9] Although older adults reported fewer opposite-sex friends than the younger group did, everyone was very positive about these friendships, ranking them as overwhelmingly bene fi cial.But when people listed attraction on the“costs and benefits” list, it almost always fell under a “cost.”Almost half of the young adults in the study spontaneously mentioned attraction as a problem in their friendships, the researchers reported April 25 in theJournal ofSocial and Personal Relationships.

[10] There was a slight sex difference to this fi nding, such that men were less likely to call sexual attraction to a friend a cost than women were, although they were still unlikely to see it as a positive.

[11] The finding shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that men and women can’t be friends, Bleske-Rechek said,just that we may have to overcome our evolutionary history to do so.

“It’s very likely that the modern environment has changed so quickly that we’ve got these novel opportunities to engage in a variety of types of relationship with the opposite sex that we probably didn’t, historically,” she said. “It’s going to take us a while to adjust.” ■

[10]這項結果對于男女還是有細微差異的，男性不像女性那樣愛把對異性朋友產生好感歸列為一種損失，但是，他們也不太可能把這看成是什么好事。

[11]布萊斯克-雷歇克說，這項發現不應被解釋為男人和女人不能做朋友，只不過，要做到這一點，得克服在這方面有所局限的人類進化歷史。

“很可能現代環境已迅速改變，我們獲得了很多新的機會與異性建立各種類型的關系，這與過去大不相同。”她說道，“我們需要一些時間來適應這種趨勢。” □