What is the recipe here? Some people are able to sustain friendships quite well, while others may or may not make friends easily, but they are nonetheless unable to sustain friendships. We all speculate about why friends exclude us or even slowly become nonresponsive to our text messages. The speculation is exhausting, right? In an effort to help us identify what individuals value most and dislike most in others, Apostolou and Vetsa (2023) set out to find answers. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to these researchers.

In study one, 236 Greek-speaking individuals, 18 years of age and older, were asked to identify the qualities that they would both like and dislike their friends to have. From this data, 50 traits were identified that individuals found desirable in friends, and 43 traits were identified as undesirable in friends.

In study two, 706 Greek-speaking individuals, also all over the age of 18, were presented with a survey that included the 50........

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