3 Personality Traits Determine How Good Your Friendships Are

You didn't just happen to choose your awesome best friends.

There's actually research to back up the fact that we favor specific personality traits when it comes to our friendships.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis did a study that shed light on what personality traits are most important when picking friends. It was based on a popular personality construct in modern psychology called the "Big 5".

In this construct, the five main traits are agreeableness, outgoingness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness.

Of the five, the first three listed affect friendships positively, the study says. Being neurotic affects friendships negatively, and apparently, openness doesn't matter much.

Here's how they came to this conclusion:

The researchers had 434 students take a personality survey, and then had them rate how satisfied they are with life and friendships.

Then they rated six of their friends' personalities. Sounds like a fun survey to me!

After compiling the information, they found that participants rated the positive traits the highest, when it comes to friends.

It kind of makes me wonder who in Taylor Swift's famous girl squad has these traits, and who doesn't.

Obviously, T-Swift is pretty conscientious when it comes to her friends. She never forgets a birthday.

It totally makes sense. People who are agreeable tend to be more kind and generous. We all want friends who are givers.

Outgoingness — or extroversion — is important because we obviously want friends who like to be around other people. Isn't that the whole point of having friends?

Conscientiousness is kind of surprising, but when you think about it, of course we'd rather have friends who can remember birthdays and more or less have their lives together. A conscientious friend is less likely to be late.

Neuroticism, or how sensitive you are, was rated lower because people who are extremely neurotic tend to be drama queens or demand a ton of attention.

I'm also surprised that openness didn't matter much, but to each his own.

Personally, I'd rather have a friend who is open to jumping in the car with me and heading out of town for the weekend instead of doing the same old bar hopping thing.

Next time you move to a new city or are in a situation where you're making new friends, you now know which traits to watch out for if you want a top-notch squad.

Citations: The Personality Traits That Make for Better Friends (Science Of Us)