118 Who Are Our Friends?
whether the couple in question has a strong history of meeting each other’s friend-
ship needs or not. If they do have such a history, then transformation of motivation
should be a relatively effortless choice, as routine as a gut- level impulse (Baumeister
et al., 1998). For couple members who do not share such a history, however, transfor-
mation of motivation may be a more effortful process, requiring valuable resources
and running a higher risk of failing. Future research is needed, but from our theo-
retical perspective, we believe that any shift in which partners rely on each other for
higher- order needs places a greater import on friendship between partners.
Another avenue for future research that should be considered has to do with
individual differences, or differences in ways in which people tend to act across situ-
ations. As stated previously, there is great variability in the needs individuals choose
to task their relationship with (VanderDrift & Agnew, 2012). We know that task-
ing the relationship with friendship needs reaps many positive downstream con-
sequences, but less is known about which individuals are more likely to make the
choice to particularly value friendship need fulfillment within their romance. There
is intuitive appeal to consider that perhaps culture or gender impacts this choice.
However, the empirical literature fails to support striking cultural or gender differ-
ences with regard to interpersonal relationships. The needs involving friendship are
fundamental human needs (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). As such, any cultural or
gender differences in the importance of friendship to romance are likely to be in
degree, rather than in category (see Reis & Carothers, 2014, for a discussion of the
structure of gender differences). Indeed, in almost all cultures, the existence of a dis-
tinction between passion and companionship exists (Fehr, 1989; Fischer, Shaver, &
Carnochan, 1990), suggesting that friendship is an important element in romances
across the world. With regard to gender, the literature suggests that the notion that
men and women place different importance on friendships, both within and out-
side of their romance, is misguided. Men and women place the same amount of
value on intimate friendships (Caldwell & Peplau, 1982). Together, the literature
fails to support the idea that examining broad demographic categories (e.g., culture,
gender) will adequately explain who opts to task their romance with the fulfillment
of friendship needs. Nevertheless, individual differences in this choice may exist.
We believe that attachment style or orientation is worth considering in this
domain. We introduced AT earlier in the chapter as a theory that specified particu-
lar needs that the pair bond enables individuals to fulfill. However, work from an
IT perspective has considered whether interdependent structure affords different
opportunities for need fulfillment, depending on an individuals’ attachment style
(Arriaga, Kumashiro, Finkel, VanderDrift, & Luchies, 2014). In this work, individu-
als with differing attachment styles chose different foci in their current relation-
ships: Avoidant individuals focused on personal goal fulfillment, whereas anxious
individuals focused on trust- related needs. Perhaps friendship needs, like the needs
examined by Arriaga and colleagues (2014), are differentially attractive targets of
focus for individuals depending on their attachment style. Hypothetically, we can