“We all know that a friendship that may take years to develop can be ruined by a single action,” writes Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow. I quit Facebook for 2020 to get away from political ads and posts, but I imagine that this year many friendships and relationships have been ended with just a single post advocating for or against a candidate. People who have known each other for a long time have probably been surprised to see political posts from friends that don’t match what they had expected, creating friction within friendships.
At a high minded level, we don’t generally think that friendships should be influenced by something as small as a political post. True friendships, our stories and Disney movies tell us, are built on more than just liking the same sports team, belonging to the same political party, or lending something to our neighbors every now and then. Real life, however, seems to suggest that those things are exactly what friendship is about. We are constantly doing a mental calculation, keeping score of favors and interactions, and cutting out friends who don’t measure up and don’t bring us happiness or don’t appear to be useful allies.
Describing research from John Gottman, Kahneman writes, “Gottman estimated that a stable relationship requires that good interactions outnumber bad interactions by at least 5 to 1.” If we think about our relationships with others from a Disney movie standpoint, this sounds a little bleak. It sounds like all of our relationships are transactional, as though we are willing to ditch a spouse, an ally, or a close friend as soon as things start to turn a little negative and as soon as we get the sense that we are doing more for the friendship than the other person.
I don’t think Gottman’s findings are as negative as they might first appear based on the stories we create about true friendship. I think his research presents some hope. His findings show us that we can maintain friendships and good marriages when we find ways to structure more positive than negative interactions with others. To do this, we can think about others rather than about our selves, and we can do things to help create more positive experiences for the other person. This will get us thinking beyond ourselves and about the people we want to be close to and want to connect with. If we can create many positive interactions and limit the negative interactions then we will maintain strong relationships with others (even if an occasional social media post turns other people off). We will develop the strong friendship and trust that we believe relationships are all about. Having a mental accounting system of good and bad interactions doesn’t have to diminish the quality of the relationships we have, at least not if we find ways to create more positive interactions with others and use it in genuine and non-manipulative ways.
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