Power of non-friendships? 

The power of friendships is a common trope in fiction – the underdogs come together to defeat an overpowering evil figure. Scientifically, it appears that things are more complex. A group of researchers from the Technical University of Denmark reported, in a yet to be published paper, that non-friends are more likely to contribute to coordinated labour work than mutual friends. 

Despite friendships being one of the most common and influential social relationships, we have little understanding of how it precisely affects our behaviour. We think intuitively that friendships give us more power because we feel comfortable in a situation, but at the same time, unfamiliar relationships can also make us feel more motivated or determined to prove ourselves.  

It is important to understand how friendships affect social behaviour, because group coordination is one of the most prevalent forms of human activity – we observe it in our everyday activity like sports, cooking, working and studying.   

Research team lead by Qianliang Li explored whether friendships or non-friendships alter a person’s behaviour in labour work. Undergraduate university students answered a questionnaire created by the research team to find out who they deem as friends and non-friends. Based on this, a triad of students from the same study line were selected, consisting of a mutual friend pair and a non-friend to both other students.  

These triads participated in a “Force game”, where students individually applied forces to pressure measuring devices to reach a specific target as a group. The screen showed the collective force inputs by the triad. Simultaneously, their brain electrical activity was measured using electroencephalography, which allowed scientists to monitor coordinated brain activity during social activities.  

Results showed that non-friends consistently generated stronger forces compared to friends, especially when the triads were selected from smaller study groups. This suggests that people are more conscious about how they are perceived by non-friends in a small social group. Brain activity also revealed that non-friends were more engaged during the tasks. These behavioural and neural differences between friends and non-friends were originating from high-level motivational and cognitive processes rather than basic motor functions. 

There are different ways to interpret these findings. One interpretation could be that non-friends feel the need to establish their position within a social group by demonstrating their contribution. Another interpretation is that friends are able to share workload efficiently because they are better aware of each other’s capabilities. Either way, further research is required to fully understand the effect of pre-existing relationships on a variety of social activities.  

By Kazuma Oura, May 7, 2026

Edited by Marina Milsum