Sex Differences In Young Adults’ Attraction To Their Opposite-Sex Friends : Natural Sampling Versus Mental Concepts

Abstract

Although opposite-sex friendships are often defined as platonic, heterosexual men and women frequently report sexual or romantic undertones in their friendships with the opposite sex. In several studies in which young adults are asked to report on their friendships or select a friend to come into the lab with them, men have reported more physical and sexual attraction to their opposite-sex friends than women have. These sex differences have been moderate to strong in magnitude. In our first two studies, we approached male-female dyads in their everyday context; we expected to find a statistically significant, moderate-to-strong difference between male and female friends’ attraction to one another.