Schaefer DR, Haas SA, Bisho NJ. A dynamic model of US adolescents’ smoking and friendship networks. American Journal of Public Health. 2012; 102(6):12–18. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2012.300705. [ PMC free article] [ PubMed] [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar] An individual’s personality was identified through two indicators. The first was obtained from a question investigating whether individuals trust people; the results distinguished those who declared that most people can be trusted from those who thought that they must be very careful. The second indicator was obtained from a question asking individuals for their views on future and personal situations, with four response options: the situation will improve, it will remain the same, the situation will worsen, and “do not know.” In the analyses, the individuals were grouped into optimistic, pessimistic, and indifferent categories; the last merging people who did not know with those who declared the situation will remain the same. Along the same lines, an individual’s satisfaction on specific aspects of life, ranging from employment 3 and economic resources to family relationships and leisure time, was taken into account by the model. 4 Identical to questions on friendship relationships, the corresponding response options consisted of the following: 1 = very satisfied, 2 = quite satisfied, 3 = not very satisfied, and 4 = not satisfied at all. In the following analyses, the last two categories are grouped as one.

Friends Are the Family You Choose: Genome-Wide Analysis Friends Are the Family You Choose: Genome-Wide Analysis

Good wishes. A friend will be excited when things are going well for you. They’ll celebrate your success and be happy for your happiness. There’s no room for envy or selfishness: a true friend is always with you. Friends are your chosen family." It's a saying we often hear, but know that it should really be reserved for our most trusted companions. Sure, all friendships are special, but when we think about those who have been there for us through our hardest times, the people we spend the holidays with, and those who we speak to every day, the word friendship just doesn't do them justice. Simply put, they're family.

An individual’s personality traits also affect life satisfaction. Trusting other people and having a positive attitude increase the probability of having high life satisfaction. Similarly, the data suggests that an individual’s high satisfaction with facets of their life (economic, health and family relationships, and free time) correlates to a higher life satisfaction. In a nutshell, your friends feature prominently in your relationships. For many people, their friends end up being an extremely significant part of their lives.

Friends, the Family You Choose - Exploring your mind

Van Der Horst M, Coffè H. How friendship network characteristics influence subjective well-being. Social Indicators Research. 2012; 107(3):509–529. doi: 10.1007/s11205-011-9861-2. [ PMC free article] [ PubMed] [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar] Trust. A true friend is someone you can trust. Someone you can be yourself with, fully sincere and transparent. When times are good and when times are bad, your friends will be there. And you know they’ll tell you the truth, even if you don’t want to hear it.

The researchers focused on 1,932 unique subjects and compared pairs of unrelated friends against pairs of unrelated strangers. The same people, who were neither kin nor spouses, were used in both types of samples. The only thing that differed between them was their social relationship.

Friends Are the Family You Choose Ornament - Etsy Friends Are the Family You Choose Ornament - Etsy

Friendship hasn’t changed a lot over time. Thousands of years ago, the Ancient Greeks thought that there were different types of friends. One was friends that are reliable and who will always help us. Another type was the friends who we have fun with – they might not be very reliable but we have a good time with them. Data was obtained from the multipurpose survey “Aspects of Daily Life,” collected by the Italian National Statistical Institute (Istat) in 2012. The focus of the current study is on individuals aged 18–64years old. This data allows investigation of friendship’s effects on life satisfaction, measuring in terms of the frequency with which individuals see their friends (intensity) and the satisfaction with friendship relationships (quality). The underlying hypothesis is that friendship relationships influence life satisfaction through the potential (instrumental and emotional) resources that friends may provide. Those resources depend on both the presence of friends (measured in terms of frequency of meeting friends) and on the quality of the friendship (friendship satisfaction).It is also the case that some traits only work if your friend also has them, Fowler said: "The first mutant to speak needed someone else to speak to. The ability is useless if there's no one who shares it. These types of traits in people are a kind of social network effect."