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”吗？一项新的研究表明，答案是肯定的——但男性或许比女性更容易对男女友谊产生浪漫想法。

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.”

相较于女性对其男性朋友，男性更容易对其女性朋友产生好感，而且，男性比女性更容易高估对方对自己的兴趣。研究发现，大多数情况下，友谊中的暧昧更多地被视作负担，而非好事。

[2]威斯康星大学欧克莱尔分校的心理学家阿普丽尔·布莱斯克-雷歇克参与了这项研究，她说：“我认为男人和女人确实想做朋友，也确实想要柏拉图式的友谊，但我所收集的数据显示，这可能会受到暧昧情愫的阻碍。”

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.

单纯的男女朋友

[3]布莱斯克-雷歇克告诉“生命科学”网站，友情是一个很有趣的研究领域，因为这种关系不具备明显的繁殖优势。进化心理学家们常常专注于两性关系和亲缘关系，因为他们假设人类的进化是将自己的基因一代传一代。但是，朋友之间并没有血缘关系，也没有共同的后代，而他们仍然会在彼此遭遇困难时伸手相助。

[4]布莱斯克-雷歇克和她的同事们对异性朋友（均为异性恋者）之间如何处理友情中可能出现的爱恋情感很感兴趣。首先，他们找来88对大学生年纪的异性朋友填写有关他们友情的调查问卷。找来成对的异性朋友是为了确保双方都认可两人之间的友谊，防止一厢情愿的情形干扰调查结果。

[5]每对参与者分开回答关于他们友情的问题，包括自己被对方吸引的程度。为了不让两人有过后互通答案的顾虑，研究人员要求他们对答案进行保密，研究结束后也不能公布。

[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]结果显示，男性更容易着迷于女性朋友。布莱斯克-雷歇克说，男人高估女人对自己的兴趣，这并不罕见。

爱上自己的朋友

[7]有女朋友的男性和单身男性一样容易对他们的女性朋友产生好感或产生和对方约会的念头。有男朋友的女性也和单身女孩一样容易对其男性朋友产生好感，但她们会适可而止，自己有伴侣却还说想跟异性朋友约会的女性较少。

[8]下一步，研究人员想把研究扩展到大学生群体之外，他们将问卷发给了107个18～23岁的年轻人和322个27～55岁的成年人。问题涉及被试的异性友情，被试可以列出理由，说明为什么这些友情既令人受益又让人疲惫。

[9]调查发现，年长成人相比于年轻成人，异性朋友更少，但是，所有人都积极看待这种友情，认为绝大多数情况下这是有益的。但人们在填表时，几乎总是把对异性朋友产生好感列入异性友情“损失和收益”中的“损失”一栏。研究人员在4月25日的《社会和人际关系》杂志上撰写报告称，调查中，几乎一半的年轻成人主动将对异性朋友产生好感当成影响友谊的一个问题。

[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]这项结果对于男女还是有细微差异的，男性不像女性那样爱把对异性朋友产生好感归列为一种损失，但是，他们也不太可能把这看成是什么好事。

[11]布莱斯克-雷歇克说，这项发现不应被解释为男人和女人不能做朋友，只不过，要做到这一点，得克服在这方面有所局限的人类进化历史。

“很可能现代环境已迅速改变，我们获得了很多新的机会与异性建立各种类型的关系，这与过去大不相同。”她说道，“我们需要一些时间来适应这种趋势。” □