Researchers have long argued that men’s friendships are shallower and less emotionally supportive than women’s, a pattern known as the “gender friendship gap.” But new research questions how universal it really is. Published in sexual rolesThe study found that this gap is primarily driven by white men in particular, rather than men overall.
Much of the research on the gender friendship gap relies on primarily white, middle-class samples, raising important questions. Do these patterns actually hold true for different racial and socio-economic groups?
Researcher Emily C. Fox reconsidered this assumption by taking an intersectional approach, examining how gender and ethnic identity jointly shape friendship experiences. The authors questioned whether the “gap” reflected universal gender differences or was concentrated within specific groups, given previous research suggesting that social context, alienation, and cultural norms influence the formation and maintenance of friendships.
This study used data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Study of Youth Cohort, a large, nationally representative sample followed over time. Fox focused on respondents who were between 18 and 21 years old in 2002 and identified a close friend who was not a parent, romantic partner, or co-parent. The final sample included 1,765 participants across Black, Latino, and White racial groups.
Participants were asked to think about their best friend and report how close they felt to that person on a scale of 0 to 10. Participants also provided demographic information such as gender and ethnic identity, as well as proxy information for socio-economic background based on the educational background of the participant’s resident guardian. This dataset includes information about friends’ characteristics (such as whether they are from the same gender or ethnic group, how similar they are in age, and how long their friendship has lasted), allowing researchers to account for similarities between friends that may influence intimacy.
The study also investigated how friends actually interact with each other. Participants reported how often they communicated with their best friend in a typical month, how often they discussed personal relationships and asked for advice, which was used as a measure of emotional support, and how often they talked about educational and career decisions and received practical support.
Overall, participants reported high levels of intimacy with their best friends, suggesting that these relationships are meaningful and emotionally important. Initial comparisons showed that women reported feeling closer to their best friends than men, and that closeness also varied by racial group.
A closer look at these patterns reveals that the differences are not uniform. Black men and Black women reported similar levels of intimacy, but Latinx men reported slightly lower levels of intimacy than Latinx women. The largest gap emerged among white participants, with white men reporting significantly lower levels of intimacy than white women.
Some of these differences changed when communication patterns were considered. Among Latina participants, differences in the frequency with which men and women had emotionally supportive conversations helped explain the intimacy gap. Once these interaction patterns were taken into account, the differences between Latino men and women were no longer significant.
However, the friendship gap between white men and white women persisted even after accounting for frequency of communication and type of conversation, pointing to the involvement of other factors.
Looking at the group as a whole, a consistent pattern emerged that regardless of ethnic identity, emotional support, particularly discussing personal relationships and seeking advice, was strongly associated with greater intimacy. At the same time, other influences also differed by group.
For example, socio-economic background showed a small but meaningful association with intimacy among White participants, with participants from more advantaged backgrounds reporting slightly lower intimacy. Furthermore, friendship similarities, such as sharing the same gender or racial identity, do not consistently predict closeness across all groups, suggesting that the factors that shape friendship quality are highly dependent on social context.
Of note, this study focused on young adults aged 18 to 21 years, which may limit generalizability to older populations and different life stages. Additionally, the dataset did not include all racial groups in sufficient numbers for analysis, and some smaller ethnoracial categories were excluded.
Taken together, these findings suggest that the friendship gap between men and women reflects the specific experiences of White men rather than a universal feature of relationships, highlighting the importance of considering race and social context in psychological research.
The study, “Are White Men Missing Out?: Differences in Friendship Closeness by Gender and Ethnic Identity,” was authored by Emily C. Fox.
