People are often drawn to the most famous people in their social circles, even if that person is famous.
But are their friends truly reliable, or are they just people to be befriended and trusted?
Oxford University researchers have a new approach to finding out.
They have used computer technology to track the friendship of nearly 10,000 people, and found that people are less likely to meet someone they’d expect to be friendlier than they really are.
“People are less willing to meet people they think will be more likeable than they are to meet a person they think they know,” says Dr David Giddens, one of the paper’s authors and a researcher at the Oxford Martin School.
“So, they’re more likely to find the person more annoying, more like a troll, and more likelier to be a stranger.”
He and his colleagues used the computer program Social Graphs, which they developed in collaboration with the University of Cambridge.
Social Graph was developed by a team of researchers at the University’s Department of Psychology and was originally designed to study online behaviour and to analyse patterns in online conversations.
But it was developed in response to a need to use the tool to investigate the behaviour of people online.
When researchers used Social Graph to track friendships over the course of five years, they found that the majority of people were not in a relationship with any of their friends.
They also found that most of their relationships were not very meaningful and that most people were more likely than not to be lonely.
“This shows that when people do socialise online, they tend to do it in an online context where they’re not necessarily interacting with a partner, a friend or a significant other,” says lead author Dr Matthew Wortley.
“There are so many people you can meet online and you could be meeting someone who is just a friend, a person you might have a great time with, or someone who might have just a bit of an annoying habit.””
People tend to have very strong preferences for people they like,” he adds. “
There are so many people you can meet online and you could be meeting someone who is just a friend, a person you might have a great time with, or someone who might have just a bit of an annoying habit.”
It’s not necessarily a thing that you have to be likeable to have a good time.””
And this is one of those things that’s not something that’s universal.
It’s not necessarily a thing that you have to be likeable to have a good time.”
In fact, if you have a particular person, then you are more likely not to get along with that person,” he says.
“They might be able to be friends with somebody, but they might not feel like it.” “
A lot of people don’t have that type of strong attachment,” he explains.
“They might be able to be friends with somebody, but they might not feel like it.”
So, in a world of social networks, how do you know if someone is trustworthy?
“There’s lots of social proof that people like,” says Wortleys team leader Dr Sarah White.
“We need to know how well we can tell these relationships are trustworthy and how much trust there is between us and these people.”
To do this, she and her colleagues used a combination of machine learning and personality testing to look at whether people were really trustworthy.
The test involved participants viewing a series of images of people who were randomly matched on appearance and social status.
“As you can imagine, people who look similar to each other are generally seen as trustworthy, whereas people who are different to each others appearance tend to be perceived as more dangerous,” explains White.
The more different people looked, the more likely they were to be judged as trustworthy.
But, interestingly, people with very similar appearance tended to be viewed as more trustworthy.
This was even more the case when people were looking at images of their own friends.
“When you’re looking at someone, you have the option to look as if you know them well,” explains Wortys team leader.
“That means that if you look very similar to them, then they might seem like a person who is trustworthy, but then if you get to know them a little bit more, then it’s likely they might be more likely, perhaps even more dangerous.”
The researchers also looked at the relationships between people’s trust in their friends, and their confidence in their own abilities.
People who were seen as more confident in their abilities were also perceived as trustworthy by others, even when they looked just like their friends in appearance.
The researchers say that this type of social comparison can be a useful way to understand people’s relationship with others online.
And they say that it can also be a good way to find out what types of friendships people have.
“Our findings indicate that people can be better at detecting friendship than they realise, and that they are more willing to trust their friends if they see them as trustworthy,” White says.
“If they think that they have a relationship, they are likely to be more willing than others to trust that person