SSW Professor Geoff Greif was quoted in the story "How To Make Friends (In Real Life)" that appears online at the popular British web site, Mr. Porter.com.
A 2015 study by the Movember Foundation, the charity behind the annual fundraising event in which men grow moustaches for the month of November, found that some 2.5 million men in the UK do not have a single friend they could turn to for help or advice in a crisis. The same study also discovered men’s chances of friendlessness almost trebles between their early twenties and late middle age, with married men less likely than single men to say they have friends to turn to outside the home.
“Men tend to conduct their relationships shoulder to shoulder, whereas with women it’s face to face,” says Professor Geoffrey L Greif of Maryland University and author of Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships, based on interviews with 400 men and 100 women and one of the largest studies to date. “This means, in general, men go to the pub to watch the game or take part in some kind of sport. Women tend not to need a reason to meet up to increase friendship. They will meet up for coffee to just talk. Men tend to need an activity as a precursor to pursuing a friendship."