Friends Who Travel Together Form Closer Bonds And Have Better Experiences

Embarking on a journey with your friends is an unpredictable voyage that every person should experience at least once in his or her life.

Exploring a different country, conquering fears together and discovering new perspectives ultimately progresses our relationships to levels never imagined possible.

Even when we return from the trip we took with friends, we will always keep those golden memories and share them for the rest of our lives. Nobody could ever take those away.

So, if you're able to convince your friends to pack their bags and start a new chapter across the seas, keep them close: The friends who travel with you will be some of the greatest friends you could possibly ever ask for.

This is partially because the experiences you will go through while traveling abroad with a companion are unparalleled to anything you encounter on a daily basis.

But it's also because you will develop a friendship and a bond that is stronger from the learning and traveling you have done together.

Sharing incredible experiences with friends makes those moments matter more.

When we travel with our friends, those memories become even more priceless in our bank of golden experiences.

The moments we hold so dear to our hearts are often the ones that were celebrated with some of our closest companions, and apparently sharing these experiences has everything to do with it.

The Association For Psychological Science reports on a study that tested the links between shared experiences and intensity of feelings and emotions.

The study looked at 23 female college students who were brought in to experience the taste of chocolate with a partner.

Researchers found that when the students were paired together to chomp down on some chocolate, they reported liking the taste much more than when they were told to eat it alone.

Not only that, but study participants noted feeling more in tune with each other, as well as enjoying the taste of the chocolate more, when eating in pairs.

Researchers note that this is a huge finding when it comes to shared experience research because it is a clear indicator that our experiences are intensified when paired with someone else.

So you can imagine how incredible it would feel to land in a new country and start a new adventure with your friends by your side.

Erica Boothby, lead researcher at Yale University, tells the Association,

A pleasant experience that goes unshared is a missed opportunity to focus on the activity we and others are doing and give it a boost.

When traveling with friends, we're more likely to make exciting memories.

It's important to travel the world at a young age, and doing it with friends certainly makes it a whole lot more exciting.

At this point of our lives, we should be experiencing the diversity of our world to make us as cultured and educated as possible. But being so young can make it difficult to travel entirely alone, and we're always more confident with a companion by our side.

A study called Meet the Millennials was recently published by PGAV Destinations and shows Millennials are quite different than any other generation when it comes to travel.

According to the nationwide survey, 58 percent of young travelers explore the world with their friends, which is a whopping 20 percent more than any other age group.

And we're not just trying to lie on the beach: Nearly 80 percent of all Millennials surveyed prefer to have an entertaining vacation, and 68 percent of us want to do something interactive.

By immersing ourselves in a new culture, we are no longer constrained by the limits society places on us. We are free to interact with our new environments with a fresh outlook, and that is one of the most beautiful sights you can possibly imagine.

Those newfound perspectives, which shape and transform us into who we are, also strengthen our bonds and similarities with each other.

Traveling with friends makes us feel more fulfilled.

If you've ever traveled alone, you know how difficult it is to experience something incredible and not be able to immediately discuss how insanely beautiful life can be with your best friend.

A study published in the journal SCAN used an MRI scanner to study the brain patterns of study participants while looking at photographs.

When women performed the study alongside their friends, they reported feeling more emotionally responsive to images and experiences when their friends were going through the same thing.

But what's also unique to this study is that the MRI machines found participants also felt the immediate desire to share their emotional response with friends.

Basically, this study proves what some already see to be true: Humans are social and emotional animals. We prefer to share our experiences with others, and if we can have a friend by our side while traveling the world, it makes those memories that much more incredible.

If the age-old saying is true that you never truly know someone until you travel with them, then it's also true that you've never truly traveled until you've done it with one of your best friends.

Citations: Sharing Makes Both Good and Bad Experiences More Intense (Psychological Science), New Study Sheds Light on Millennial Generation (Leisure Group Travel), The Sharing Effect (Berkely)