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Friendship expectations are prescriptive normative behaviors and highly valued qualities in ideal same-sex friends. This paper reports the results of five meta-analyses of sex differences from 37 manuscripts (36 samples, N = 8825). A small difference favoring females was detected in overall friendship expectations ( d = .17). Friendship expectations were higher for females in three of four categories: symmetrical reciprocity (e.g., loyalty, genuineness; d = .17), communion (e.g., self-disclosure, intimacy; d = .39), solidarity (e.g., mutual activities, companionship; d = .03), but agency (e.g., physical fitness, status; d = -.34) was higher in males. Overall expectations and symmetrical reciprocity showed small effect sizes. Medium effect sizes for communion favoring females and for agency favoring males support predictions of evolutionary theory.
Jeffrey A. Hall (Wed,) studied this question.