Here's Why Making More Friends Won't Make You Happy
Deep Connections Are the Secret Sauce to Lifelong Happiness
Does having a lot of friends truly make you happy?
Probably not.
When it comes to personal relationships, quality is much more important than quantity.
The impact of close relationships on happiness
A pivotal 2013 paper by Shimon Saphire-Bernstein, analyzed over 30 independent studies to conclude that happiness is more influenced by quality rather than the quantity of relationships.
The paper looks at all sorts of relationships—like those with family, friends, and romantic partners—and tries to understand just how these relationships impact our sense of happiness.
Bernstein was curious about a few things:
Do more relationships make us happier?
Does the quality of these relationships matter more than the quantity?
How do factors like whether we're married or single play into our overall happiness?
To find these answers, he looked at a whole bunch of studies already out there—this method is known as a meta-analysis. By pooling data from various sources, he hoped to get a clearer picture of the big trends across many different people's experiences.
Let’s dive into the results.
Being more social doesn’t make us (much) happier
Bernstein found something pretty interesting about how our relationships impact our happiness—which is that social interactions don’t have as big an impact as you might expect.
Essentially, having social interactions and being connected with others generally makes people happier. However, the strength of this effect isn't huge—it's positive but modest.
While hanging out with friends and participating in social events definitely contributes to feeling good about life, it's just one of many factors that can affect how happy you feel.
So, while it's good to be socially active, it's just one small piece of the larger happiness puzzle.
But, the research did find that the quality of different types of relationships can have a much larger impact.
When it comes to relationships, quality > quantity
It turns out that the quality of our relationships matters a lot more than just how many people we know or how often we're socializing.
Having a few close, supportive relationships—like a really good marriage or a couple of close friends you can count on—makes a bigger difference in how happy you feel compared to just having a large number of acquaintances or being constantly out and about.
At some point during COVID, I was feeling very disconnected from my friends and family—many of whom live on the other side of the country. I set up a daily reminder that simply said, “Check in.” This was my prompt to text or call at least one close friend or family member and talk with them about literally anything. For me, this helped me get through some of the loneliest stages of the pandemic and is a powerful reminder of how important it is to maintain that handful of relationships that truly matter.
If you want to be happier, the easiest thing you can do is maintain and strengthen the close relationships you already have.
The research also shed light on whether married people were happier than single people.
Essentially, being married does have a positive effect on happiness, but it's not as strong as you might expect. The study found that the correlation between being married and happiness is about 0.07—this is a positive number, but it's pretty low, which means the effect is there, but it's weak.
Men seem to get a bigger happiness boost from being married than women do.
The study highlights how for married women, the quality of their marriage can predict as much as 35% of their overall life satisfaction. While men tend to get a bigger happiness boost from being married at all—for women, the quality of the marriage is what will determine whether they are happy or miserable.
How relationships impact our happiness as we get older
The effect of relationships on happiness shifts as people grow older.
Younger people derive more happiness from being married or having friends compared to older people.
This could be due to changes in priorities or social roles as we age. For instance, older adults might find more contentment in fewer but closer relationships, while younger people might benefit more broadly from wider social networks.
These shifting priorities can happen quicker than you think. When I was 25, my ideal night out was at the pub with my friends. At 35, my idea of a great Friday night would be playing board games with my kids and having a glass of wine with my wife once the kids are asleep.
This layer of understanding helps us appreciate that boosting our happiness through relationships isn't a one-size-fits-all; it varies widely depending on individual circumstances like age and gender.
Final thoughts
Wrapping up what we've been talking about from this research paper, the key takeaway is quite clear: it's not just about how many people we know or how social we are, but the quality of our connections really matters when it comes to our happiness.
Specifically, deeper, more intimate relationships like those with a spouse or close friends have a significant impact on how happy we feel. Interestingly, this effect is even more pronounced for women, suggesting that emotional depth in relationships might play a bigger role in their well-being compared to men.
From these findings, there's a practical implication for all of us. Focusing on improving the quality of our important relationships could be a more effective way to enhance our overall happiness than simply increasing our social circle.
This might involve deepening existing relationships or being more selective about cultivating new ones that offer genuine support and connection.
This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.
For me, 100% quality over quantity. 😊
The "principles" for happiness don't always catch my attention, but I undoubtedly see this in my everyday life. I have many acquaintances, people with whom I also like to spend a little time or talk about specific things, but the people who fill my time and with whom I really spend quality time are few. The beauty, I think, is also in this: feeling that there are people really close to you and to whom you feel deeply connected. I have a phrase that I often repeat: what's the point of celebrating successes if you can't share them?