Who's more group-oriented? A UK-Japan friendship study flips the usual answer

How the study asked about friend groups

People who can't seem to meet anyone new often reach for culture. Everyone here has their own group, and you can't get in. There's an academic version of the claim too: Eastern societies are collectivist and group-minded, Western ones are individualist.

A paper in the British Journal of Social Psychology, published in January 2026, asked a very specific version of the question. When you see friends, is it usually one friend or several?

The main tool was the Friendship Habits Questionnaire (FHQ), 23 items on whether you lean toward one-on-one or group friendships. People also estimated how much of their friend time was spent in groups, from 0% (always with one friend) to 100% (always with two or more), and how many friends they usually socialize with at the same time.

Study 1 had 527 people in Japan (average age 29.71) and 518 in the UK (22.01). Study 2 used university students: 312 in Japan (23.43) and 317 in the UK (19.61). All were 18 to 35, which makes 1,674 in total.

The UK comes out more group-oriented, twice

The FHQ gaps are sizable (d=−.87 and d=−.77), and they point the same way in both studies. They also survived two analytic approaches and controls for age, gender and socioeconomic status.

The authors admit this "might at first seem counterintuitive, as Japan is often described as a collectivist society." They say their findings challenge the "common view" of collectivism and individualism.

Why? So far, only guesses

The study also measured relational mobility, meaning how freely people in a society can make new relationships and leave old ones. The UK scored higher than Japan (4.00 against 3.69 in Study 1), and people higher in relational mobility also had more group-oriented friendships.

The authors float a few possibilities, including the rise of single-person households (34.53% in Japan and 28.70% in the UK in 2015), since living alone is linked to social isolation. They're careful to say "might," and the study didn't test any of this.

The samples also differed in age, gender and socioeconomic status. Controlling for those didn't change the key findings, but the authors still recommend repeating the work with more similar groups.

What this study can't tell us

• Only the UK and Japan were measured. Neither can speak for "the West" or "the East."
• Japan isn't East Asia. Taiwan wasn't measured here, and neither were South Korea or China.
• Everything is self-reported. The authors suggest diary studies would give a closer look at real gatherings.
• It's correlational, so it can't say that living somewhere causes a style of friendship.
• A bigger friend group doesn't mean it's easier to join. Size and openness are separate things.

The closest Taiwan data comes from a different paper. Thomson and colleagues measured relational mobility across 39 countries in 2018: Taiwan scored −0.294, Japan −0.414, South Korea −0.007, the UK 0.044 and the USA 0.182. That's a different construct with a different sample, so it doesn't tell us whether Taiwanese friendships look more like those in Japan or in the UK.

So the finding isn't that small circles don't exist. It's that "that's just our culture" hasn't earned the status of an established fact.

If you're going out this week

The most useful thing here is permission to drop the excuse. "It's just our culture" may or may not be true, but this study gives it no support. Why you aren't meeting anyone could have more to do with where you went this week, and who with.

The authors also warn researchers not to assume "that everyone socializes or wants to socialize in groups," and not to treat friendship as purely one-on-one either. That applies to you too. Some people like one friend at a time, others like a full table, and neither is doing it wrong.

• If you prefer one-on-one, pick smaller settings and look for someone else who came alone.
• If you like a crowd, pick something with an activity. People are already doing something together, which makes joining easier.
• If you want out of your usual circle, go somewhere your friends wouldn't.

Not sure what to say first? Try how to start a conversation at a bar or event. Looking for somewhere to go? Here are upcoming events. And if you'd like to meet people at the same bar or event, Limere is one way to do it. Walking into a new room is usually easier than prying open an old circle.