CDate:: [[03-19-2024]] Status:: #🌱 Tags:: Links:: [[Relationships MOC]] [[Romantic Relationships MOC]] [[Online Dating MOC]] # What you think you want in a friendship or romantic partner isn't what you actually want Eastwick et al. (2020) explored whether our ideal friendship descriptions predict our liking toward a potential friend that matches or doesn't match our description in a non-physical versus physical setting. The researchers knew in the romantic relationship literature, our ideal partner descriptions don't 100% predict the actual partner we go out with. They wanted to see if the same is true in the friendship literature. In sum, the study found it is true across both domains. I think the reason why we might do this is when we are distant temporarlly, spacially, or emotionally from someone or something, it's easy to abstract it. According to Daniell Kahneman in thinking fast and slow there is a bias that effects humans called what you see is all there is. In other words, nothing is as important as you think it is until you are seeing it. Therefore, our abstractions of our ideal friend make us think they would have a strong impact on friendship as it's what we see but they don't. Huang, S. A., Ledgerwood, A., & Eastwick, P. W. (2020). How Do Ideal Friend Preferences and Interaction Context Affect Friendship Formation? Evidence for a Domain- General Relationship Initiation Process. _Social Psychological and Personality Science_, _11_(2), 226-235. [https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619845925](https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619845925)