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Two questions were investigated: (a) How strong are the effects of similarities in interests on friendship choice, and (b) how does friendship foster the development of commonly shared leisure interests? Changes in interest similarities for a group of 96 male friendship dyads living on a German university campus were compared with interest changes in a control group over a period of 6 months. A strong effect of interest similarities on the selection of friends was not supported. Only weak socialization effects were found.
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Fink et al. (1995) studied this question.
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