Attractiveness and Rivalry in Women’s Friendships
with Women
April Bleske-Rechek & Melissa Lighthall
Published online: 9 March 2010
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract Past research suggests that young women perceive their same-sex friends
as both facilitating the pursuit of desirable mates and competing for access to
desirable mates. We propose that similar levels of physical attractiveness between
young adult female friends might be one explanation for the opposing forces in their
friendships. Forty-six female friendship pairs completed questionnaires about
themselves, their friend, and their friendship; in addition, each woman’s picture
was rated by a set of nine naive judges. Friends were similar in both self-rated and
other-rated level of attractiveness. Within-pair analyses revealed that women agreed
on which friend was more attractive, and the less attractive members of each
friendship pair (by pair consensus as well as outside judges’ ratings) perceived more
mating rivalry in their friendship than did the more attractive members of each
friendship pair. We offer directions for research on women’s friendships over the
lifespan.
Keywords Women’s friendships . Same-sex friendship . Physical attractiveness .
Rivalry
Bestselling novels in the United States and elsewhere, such as The Jane Austen Book
Club, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Memoirs of a Geisha, and A Thousand Splendid
Suns, celebrate the unique architecture of friendships between women. Scholarly
books on friendship, too, are numerous, with more of them devoted to women’s
friendships than to men’s. Books on women’s friendships emphasize the opposing
forces that appear to define these relationships. Three of the top Amazon.com
(January 2009) hits for books on female friendships, for example, portray juxtaposed
forces in women’s friendships: Secrets and Confidences: The Complicated Truth
about Women’s Friendships (Eng 2004), Between Women: Love, Envy and
Hum Nat (2010) 21:82–97
DOI 10.1007/s12110-010-9081-5
A. Bleske-Rechek (*) : M. Lighthall
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI 54702–4004, USA
e-mail: bleskeal@uwec.edu

Competition in Women’s Friendships (Eichenbaum and Orbach 1989), and Best
Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls’ and Women’s Friendships (Apter and
Josselson 1998).
Empirical research on emerging and young adults corroborates what literary
scholars have suggested: Women perceive both benefits and costs in their friendships
with women (Bleske and Buss 2000). On one hand, young women frequently report
that their female friendships provide companionship and emotional support (Rose
1985), and that their female friends give them mating advice and accompany them in
mate-seeking endeavors (Bleske and Buss 2000; Gottman and Mettetal 1986). On
the other hand, women also report that their female friendships take up a lot of time
and are emotionally draining (Hays 1988; Micke et al. 2008), and that their female
friends make them feel bad about themselves and compete with them for attention
from desirable potential romantic partners (Bleske and Buss 2000). We conducted
the current study to test the proposal that similar levels of physical attractiveness
between female friends is one factor underlying the opposing forces in women’s
friendships.
One reason to expect that female friends are similar in physical attractiveness is
data showing that friends are similar on a variety of other dimensions, some of
which may be linked to similarity in attractiveness. For example, friends tend to
have similar interests and values, which may be tied to similarity in health-
promoting or appearance-enhancing behaviors. Friends tend also to be similar in age,
level of education, family background, income, religious views, political views, and
the activities they enjoy (Johnson 1989; Tolson and Urberg 1993; see Fehr 1996 for
a review).
There are multiple, related explanations for previously observed similarities
observed among friends. First, according to theories of cognitive consistency (Heider
1958), humans are driven by a need for balance, and thus we prefer to be around
individuals who perceive issues and other people the same way we do. Relatedly, the
logic of Strategic Interference Theory (Buss 2004) suggests that we are oriented
toward interaction partners who will help us achieve our goals. From this
perspective, we are more likely to achieve our goals when we are allied with others
who are moving toward those same goals. For example, it may be easier for women
to find and meet potential long-term mates with certain qualities (such as financial
capacity and high levels of commitment intent) if they ally themselves with another
woman looking for those qualities, even if they might have to compete with her later
for access to one or more of those mates.
A second explanation of observed similarities between friends comes from an
individual differences perspective. Individuals’ education, abilities, interests, and
values guide the environments they select for themselves and so they are more likely
to spend time with similar others than with dissimilar others (Scarr and McCartney
1983). This idea of “niche-seeking” may be important for friendship formation,
because individuals increasingly like those with whom they come in frequent contact
(Hamm et al. 1975; Morinaga and Matsumura 1987). For example, women who
report less willingness to engage in casual sex differ from their unrestricted
counterparts in the tactics they use to attract mates, such as dressing conservatively
(Bleske-Rechek and Buss 2006). These women may come into contact with each
other more frequently than expected by chance and develop friendly attitudes toward
Hum Nat (2010) 21:82–97 83