It is a well-known finding in psychological research that there is a gender gap in responses when people are asked how close they rate their friendships. On average, boys and men subjectively rate their friendships as less emotionally close and supportive than do girls and women.
A question that has not been answered scientifically, yet, is whether the gender friendship gap iexists among all ethnoracial identity groups and for people of different economic statuses.
A new study systematically investigated the gender friendship gap for people of different ethnoracial identity groups and with different socioeconomic backgrounds (Fox, 2026). The study, conducted by scientist Emily C. Fox from the University of California at Santa Barbara, was based on an analysis of data from a large dataset, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. This dataset was provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor, so it can be assumed to be very trustworthy.
The study, titled “Are White Men Missing Out?: Differences in Friendship Closeness by Gender and Ethnoracial Identity”, included a group of people who had first been testet in 1997, when they were 13 or 14 years old, and again in 2002. Overall, there were 1,765 volunteers, all, of whose best friend was not a partner or parent. Thus, the sample was very large for a psychological study, and the results are likely to be robust.
Of the group, 825 participants were women and 940 were men, and they were either Black, Latino/a, or White. Each volunteer had rated how close they felt to their best friend on a scale from 0 (not close at all) to 10 (very close). Moreover, volunteers gave information about their gender, their ethnoracial identity, their education, their best friend’s identity, and some information about their communication patterns with their friends.
Overall, the study participants reported that they felt pretty close to their best friends (average: 8.84 points out of 10). Across all groups, men (8.6) felt less emotionally close to their best friend than women (9.12), although both values were rather high. Thus, the study replicated the findings on the gender friendship gap reported by previous studies.
Interestingly, however, ethnoracial identity affected the gender friendship gap. While there was no difference in friendship closeness for Black men and women, both Latino and White men showed less emotional closeness in friendships than did women. The largest difference was found for White people (White men: 8.4, White women: 9.11), although the scores for both genders were rather high on average.
Notably, however, White men whose best friend was also a male and were of high socioeconomic status reported particularly low levels of emotional closeness to their best friend.
Also of note: Volunteers on average talked to their best friends about 19 days a month—20 days for women, 18 for men. Thus, both people of both genders were talking to their best friends a lot!
The study affirms that the gender friendship gap is a robust phenomenon. Although both men and women feel a high level of emotional closeness to their friends, the overall closeness values are higher in women. Also, the gap appears stronger for White people than for other groups.
The findings overall suggest that men should be particularly mindful of caring about their friendships.
Moreover, the fact that the gender friendship gap was particularly strong for White people highlights the importance of gathering diverse samples in psychological research, as findings from past studies in mostly white samples may not hold up for other groups.