I made a video about how RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons help people make friends based on sociological and primatological research.
If you'd like to read about it, please continue.
Friends are pretty great and If you’ve played any RPGs in the past then it’s pretty likely that you’ve developed some good friends in the process. But why? How does that work? Are RPGs really that good at helping people make friends?
Well, Yes, playing RPGs can meet all the conditions to help the people create long lasting friendships. But the interesting thing isn’t that RPGs do this. The interesting thing is how RPGs create friendships. In order to understand that we need to understand a few other things first. Basic things, like what is a friend and how friendships are formed and what purpose they serve on a biological level.
What is friendship?
Defining friendship as a social behavior is pretty simple. According to psychologist Robert Seyfarth: “Friendship is a long-term, positive relationship that involves cooperation.” He and a team of other scientists discovered that by researching primates. The team spent a great deal of time observing different types of monkeys and baboons in Africa and observed that animals with strong social networks, like friendships, have longer lifespans and actually reproduce more. Friends and people who we can rely upon are there to help us deal with difficult situations in life. And while most people aren’t worried about being eaten by predatory animals anymore, the stress response still exists in humans. So apparently one of the ways we cope with those stresses is to create friendship bonds with other people. We do this in order to help reduce the amount of stress we accumulate during our day to day lives.
How do we make friends?
Researchers have known for a while now what three key building blocks are that allow us to make friends.
Proximity
Repeated interactions
And
a setting where we feel comfortable enough let our guard down
And, you remember those monkeys that Sayfarth and his team were studying? They noticed several behaviors that helped to reinforce these principals. They discovered that those same monkeys spent a lot of time together. They saw that certain monkeys chose to spend time grooming other certain monkeys expressing preferences. Those choices of who grooms who eventually led to closer connections. But why does that matter?
Why do our friends matter?
Well, Sayfarth’s team found a few other conditions that were present when the monkeys were making friends. Namely:
The amount of time spent with friends
The positive outcome of that spent time
And
An equitable return of effort.
They noticed that the monkeys spent around 20 percent of all their waking time grooming each other. Looking at the response in the monkey’s neurotransmitters, or brain chemistry a positive outcome of all that grooming was seen. Their brains were releasing oxytocin and endorphins. These are the chemicals that help us to feel safe, cared for and help to create bonds with each other. After they spent enough time with each other the monkeys developed relationships that were equally helpful to both parties. But the final piece of the puzzle was an equitable return of effort. Because if one monkey spent a good amount of time grooming another and the favor wasn’t returned then a friendship wouldn’t develop. But the team found some monkeys would spend equal time grooming one another. That equity in grooming helped the monkeys to learn that their friend would help them and eventually help deal with larger issues. Like the stress of predation.
Humans have been at the top of the food chain for a very long time. Yet we still get stressed out. That’s because there are still loads of other stressors that we face on a regular basis. Each person has their own set of troubles and issues but they also have their own set of coping skills. When we have a friend though, it helps us to develop additional resources and help mitigate stress through interaction, because brain chemicals like oxytocin can help to alleviate the effects of stress chemicals in our brains like cortisol.
What does this have to do with RPGs?
Meeting new people is tricky and how do you know if that new person has anything in common with you? Well, sometimes it helps to have a way to jumpstart those relationships. This can be called a common interest. If you've read this far you are at least passively familiar with games like Dungeons & Dragons or some other kind of role playing game. So let’s consider what RPGs do through the lens of the traditional sociological understanding of friendship.
The original list had three qualities:
Proximity
Repeated interactions
And
a setting where we feel comfortable enough let our guard down
If you consider what a standard in person role playing group looks like you immediately can see how all three of those conditions are met. The people playing the game are in close proximity to one another. They’re literally at the same table.
Now there is some question, at least to me, about whether or not a group that meets completely online still meets the same criteria for proximity since the group isn’t in the same physical location but I honestly couldn’t find any research about the difference between relationships that exist completely online vs in person in this context for RPGs. From my own experience I always find myself creating stronger bonds with people that I meet in person at some point. That’s not to say that a completely long distance virtual friendship can’t be helpful or valuable, just that everyone has their own criteria for how much of that proximity needs to be physical compared to virtual. I’m gonna bet since coronavirus made us all experts on how to video conference there’s gonna be some really interesting research released in the next few years that addresses that specific question, but I digress.
Because whether or not your group meets in person or online their goal is probably to meet on a regular basis. If they do, then you can also tick off repeated interactions. Even if one or two people miss a session from time to time there is still an expectation that some day of the week, or month, time will be put aside for D&D or whatever you’re playing. This aspect of repeated interaction is, at least anecdotally, one of the things that people struggle with the most when it comes to getting into the RPG hobby, especially if they join the hobby after college and they’ve already got a full time job and a family. But assuming everyone can get some time on saturday nights the repeat interactions are taken care of. That just leaves an environment where people can feel comfortable enough to let their guard down.
Generally speaking, a table where people are playing an RPG is a pretty welcoming place. People are sharing a common story, building a world, using their imaginations, cooperating, collaborating and hopefully having a good time. People get to share their ideas and characters that they’ve created and tell a story that they find fun and engaging. That type of expression necessitates a certain level of vulnerability. If people are new to the hobby it may be tough to find a table to play at but once people do find a supportive table they still feel comfortable enough to let their guard down and share their creativity. At least in a perfect world.
Because all three of the traditional pillars of making friends are handled readily by a normal RPG table, but what about Sayfarth’s team and the monkeys they studied? Do RPGs still stack up with the other conditions?
Monkey’s and D&D
So remember, the pillars of monkey friendship were:
The amount of time spent with friends
The positive outcome of that spent time
And
An equitable return of effort.
Any RPG group that I’ve ever been a part of meets for at least two hours. When I was younger, those sessions sometimes lasted for an entire weekend. So of course the amount of time that a group of players and a GM spend together is going to be quite a bit. Factoring in the traditional idea of repeated interaction you can see that the amount of time people spend playing RPGs with their player group almost automatically nets them lots of points on their way to friendships. But time and repetition aren’t everything. Think about people who are out in the workforce. I spend at least 40 to 50 hours with the same people at work every week but I spend very little if any of my time out of work with them. Does that mean they aren’t my friends? Not necessarily. Everyone is different and people may indeed make lasting excellent friendships with co-workers but some work environments are very competitive. This competition means it can be hard to meet one of the original criteria for friendship, having a setting where people can feel comfortable enough to let their guard down. So even though we can spend a great deal of time with people, time isn’t the only factor that creates friendships; the environment plays a big part. Just think about school. You can spend years in class with the same people and not even learn their names.
That’s why it’s so important to remember the other parts of how friendship was observed with the monkeys. The positive outcome of time spent with people is a massive part of what creates friendships. At an RPG table the group is not in competition with each other or the game master. They are all working together in order to tell the same story. The positive outcome of which doesn’t have to be completing an arc or even keeping a character alive. The positive outcome is the social interaction that occurs at the table. I’ve played at a lot of tables where we spent a ton of time just talking about the rules, planning our next move or just going to a pub in game and pretending to order food. The plot may or may not move and the characters may be our focus or be completely forgotten, but the positive outcome of that social interaction is the release of those chemicals that help us feel safe and valued. Oxytocin and endorphins are released when we spend time doing something pleasurable like laughing, singing, and storytelling. I’ve done these things at the table before and if the vast amount of RPG content on the internet is any indication, I’m not alone. We enjoy RPGs because they help us to scratch a lot of social itches.
Which dovetails real nicely into the final part of what Sayfarth’s monkeys showed, an equitable return of effort. RPG groups allow for us to contribute to a story and bring our creative ideas to life. When all the players put forth effort and try to show the other members of the table that they care, players and GMs can hopefully see it for what it is, putting out effort. This may sound like trading off GM duties, but not necessarily. Sometimes people just prefer to run the game and sometimes people aren’t comfortable as the GM. Personally I don’t see anything wrong with that. I don’t think that a player needs to show they care by taking a turn as a GM. If a player wants to take a turn as a game master I would rather they do it because they want to, not because they feel like they have to or that they’ll lose friends if they don’t. Because people don’t always put out effort the same way. Some players know the rules, some are good at tactics, some take excellent notes and some always remember to bring snacks. There are so many examples and so many different ways that I’ve seen players show they care about the game and the people they play with. If we, as players and GMs take the time to acknowledge and appreciate the care and attention that the other players bring to the table then we are able to appreciate each other not just for the value we bring to the game, but the value we bring to each others lives. Because in my experience many of my lifelong friends have one thing in common. At some point I have played an RPG with them and during that time we were able to tick all the boxes that make up a friendship.