Think about your best friend; go on, try it. Now think about your favorite past time with them, whether that be talking at school, going out to the movies, or just having a good time. How did you feel? What did you feel? Many people would describe the emotion as friendship; when asked to define friendship, an 8th grader at Cupertino Middle School states, “I feel like friendship is a feeling of trust and understanding, and when people come together to face challenges in life.” Another 8th grader, Anya Nazarova, says, “Friendship is when you really care about one another, and when it is really fun to be around that person. You can feel friendship when you connect on a spiritual level, and you really understand each other.” Both interviewees …show more content…
Serotonin can also appear when stress levels are down, which friends help with. Studies from UCLA prove that we humans, especially women, tend to seek out the companionship of our friends when we are stressed. Friends comfort us by offering and expressing social support, lowering our stress levels, and therefore increasing the level of this hormone, making us feel happier. Good friends offer a sanctuary, and someone to trust and listen to you and take you seriously; this is relevant because people with the highest “well being have more “substantive” conversations than small talk, according to a 2010 study in Psychological Science” (Abbasi, 2, “Why Friends Make Us Happier, Healthier …show more content…
But that leaves one more question: can everyone feel happiness from friendship? Or rather, do genetics play a role? Here's the deal: the brain is a fascinating lump of muscle. Not only can they form memories, emotions, and thoughts, but they can also be trained. Chess players train their brains to find a strategy in games, and rubik's cube players train theirs to find patterns; so can we train our brains to be happy? The answer is yes; exercises and patterns of thought reshape and change our thought processes in our brains over time. Friends help with that, thus, this is proof of why psychology is genuine and is such a sound and substantial field of science. If someone continues have more social interaction, or just often has good times with friends, based on our proof, they are bound to feel friendship, or just feel