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No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Personality affects dyadic relations and teamwork, yet its role among groups of friends has been little explored. We examine for the first time whether similarity in personality enhances the effectiveness of real-life friendship groups. Especially higher group-level similarity in conscientiousness was associated with group performance, and with bonding in male groups.
Keywords: friendship, personality, Big Five, groups, group performance, inclusion-of-other-in-self. Social relations with peers are essential for survival, health and well-being Caccioppo, ; David-Barrett and Dunbar, and the challenge of choosing friends and maintaining relations with them is one of our main social tasks today Pearce, Friendship formation is known to often follow principles of homophily, or attraction to similarities, as shown in relation to social, ethnic and gender characteristics e.
However, most previous research on friendship and personality considers relationship dyads, and the group dimension remains much less explored Moreland and Levine, ; Forsyth, with an except for demographic effects David-Barrett, Here, we are interested in personality homophily in close friendship groups.
Homophily in personality has been suggested to serve two main functions. First, it may reduce cognitive load: if other individuals act and react similarly to oneself, less cognitive effort has to be spent in predicting their behavior Leary, ; Brashears, ; Machin and Dunbar, ; van Duijn, Second, if homophily is a widespread social choice criterion, it can increase network density David-Barrett and Dunbar, Personality homophily is also found in other social species Seyfarth and Cheney, : for instance, captive chimpanzees prefer others who are similar in boldness and sociability Massen and Koski, and domestic horses prefer individuals of similar boldness and rank Briard et al.
