China, Japan, and India have a few things in common. 

They're all hugely powerful and populous Asian countries.

They also have restrictive gender roles. Put more bluntly, women and girls — at least until very recently in some urban centers — have have been second-class citizens compared to men in the best case and actively oppressed in the worst case.

As in: 

• In Japan, women are given the choice between being eschewing careers or having to pull insane hours at the office and taking care of everything at home, because of tradition.
• In China, the long-running (and thankfully repealed) one-child policy made daughters a liability. The policy prompted an estimated 330 million gender-related abortions. 
• In India, the preference for sons (even without formal government mandates) has led to many "missing girls." A Lancet study found that India loses 500,000 girls to sex-selective abortion every year, with many more abandoned. 

Looking at these trends from a demographic perspective, a truth emerges: oppressing women imperils a population. 

In Japan, the economic modernization of traditional society has lead to a situation where women must choose to wholly dedicate themselves to family or career, with little overlap. This has contributed to a long-declining birthrate and a "demographic time bomb" where nowhere near enough babies are being born to support an aging population. 

The preference for sons over daughters in China and India has lead to a population imbalance. There are 33 million more men in China than women, and 37 million more men than women in India. This has lead to "marriage squeeze": There aren't marriage-ready young women to go around, so there are increasing numbers of single young men. It's like dating in San Francisco, but for two countries with over a billion people each. 

Therein lies the takeaway: patriarchy, while beneficial to dudes in most ways, ends up oppressing everybody.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What the Chinese saying 'The ugly wife is a treasure at home' actually means

From the time you start elementary school until the time you graduate college, your social group is built in.

Many people graduate from college having never made a single friend outside of school.

It's surprising how debilitating this is. Lots of people are afraid to move anywhere they don't already have a group of friends living.

I've moved eight times in the last five years, four of those times to cities where I didn't know anyone.

By the time I'd been in the new city for three months, I usually had an invitation to do something every night of the week.

Here are four strategies I've developed to make friends in a brand new place.

SEE ALSO: 7 bad speaking habits that turn people off immediately

1. Update your location on Facebook.

Connection strategist Marian Zizzo gave me this tip and it's the easiest, best-return-on-investment one I can offer. When you update your city on Facebook, Facebook's algorithm considers that a major event, meaning it shows up in almost all of your friends' feeds.

That makes it an awesome opportunity to let people know why you're moving and what you're looking to do in the new city. Tell people what your hobbies and interests are: "If you know anyone in Denver that likes to hike or boulder, tag them in this update."

Even if you don't know many people that live there, you almost certainly have a few friends of friends that you can get introduced to.

When I moved to New York, I had 30 people comment on my status suggesting people in town that I might be like to meet up with.

2. Host events.

The other thing to do in the status update is to announce an event you're going to hold. Instead of trying to coordinate one-on-one with everyone tagged in your status, schedule a group event for your first or second week in the city to invite everyone to.

Once people have physically seen you in the new city, they will be more likely to remember you live there now and invite you to events they are going to in the future. Inviting people to events also takes advantage of reciprocity.

Part of the innate wiring of humans is that we want to return a favor. If you invite someone to dinner, they will want to invite you to something the future to even the ledger.

The two best times to host an event are Thursday night dinner and Sunday brunch. Competing with people's plans on Friday and Saturday night is too hard, and most people don't like to go out Monday through Wednesday. Thursday and Sunday are when most people would still like to do something casual and fun but don't already have plans.

I hosted a brunch every other Sunday for the first four months I was in New York, and probably met 20 or 30 friends of friends' connections through it.

Many of them have since been kind enough to invite me to events they are hosting or attending.

3. Say yes to everything for the first three months.

Did you get invited to tango dancing by a friend of a friend that doesn't know you're the least coordinated human on Earth? It's happened to me, twice. Doesn't matter, just go. The first few months you are in a new city, you want to go to everything.

It only takes a few good friends in a place to make a city feel like home, but you usually have to meet dozens if not hundreds of people to figure out who your tribe is. Don't get discouraged if you go to a party and don't really like anyone there. Say yes to the next one from someone else.

I went to tour a coworking space a month ago. I don't work out of coworking spaces, so there was no reason to go other than to meet people. We went to a bar afterwards, and I met five or six really cool people I'd like to hang out with again.

Who wants to live a happy, healthy, long life? Yeah, everybody.

Turns out an incredible amount of scientific evidence points to one simple answer:

Relationships.

But why? And what do we really need to do on a regular basis to see the benefits?

Turns out we’re all doing a lot of things wrong.

Let’s learn four big insights from the research and start living that great life, shall we?

SEE ALSO: The 20 best places to live in America if you want to be happy at work

1. Relationships = health

If there’s a viral pandemic going on, by all means, lock the doors and be a hermit. But short of that, being surrounded by people who care about you is a fantastic way to stay healthy. How healthy?

Add 15 years to your life. Increase your odds of beating cancer, staving off dementia, recovering from heart attacks and a lot more.

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

…if you’re surrounded by a tightly connected circle of friends who regularly gather to eat and share gossip, you’ll not only have fun but you’re also likely to live an average of fifteen years longer than a loner. One study of almost three thousand Americans found that people with close friendships are far less likely to die young, and in 2004 a Swedish epidemiologist discovered the lowest rate of dementia in people with extensive social networks. Fifty-year-old men with active friendships are less likely to have heart attacks than more solitary men, while people who have had a stroke are better protected from grave complications by a tight, supportive social network than they are by medication.

Going to the gym is great. But strong relationships turn out to be three times as great.

Poker nights are a good idea. Solitaire will kill you.

As Susan Pinker writes, “…neglecting to keep in close contact with people who are important to you is at least as dangerous to your health as a pack-a-day cigarette habit, hypertension, or obesity.”

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

Feeling lonely exaggerates the inflammation and reactivity to stress that are linked to heart disease while interfering with our ability to retain facts and solve problems, according to work by the British epidemiologist Andrew Steptoe… John Cacioppo and his colleagues have found that loneliness drives up the cortisol and blood pressure levels that damage the internal organs in both sexes, and at all ages and stages of adult life… Even months after they were released, MRIs of prisoners of war in the former Yugoslavia showed the gravest neurological damage in those prisoners who had been locked in solitary confinement. “Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic head injury,” Gawande concludes.

Problem is, a shocking number of us are lonelier than ever. As many as 23% of Americans say they have no one to talk to.

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

Studies show that we are now connected to a larger and more diverse circle of people, but between 12 and 23 percent of Americans say they have nobody to talk to (in 1985 that figure was 8 percent).

Am I the only one wondering why your doctor never asks, “How much time do you spend with friends?”

(To learn the lazy way to an awesome life, click here.)

But you have plenty of friends on Facebook, right? You text or IM or email with people all the time…

I have one question for you: Can I be the beneficiary on your life insurance policy? Because I may be getting a big check a lot sooner than you’d like…

2. Online relationships don’t count

Research shows you can have a zillion Facebook friends and still feel lonely. Emotional closeness to someone declines by 15% for every year you don’t see them face to face.

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

In a study of the effect of Internet use on social relationships in adults aged eighteen to sixty-three, Dutch psychologist Thomas Pollet found that time spent using online social networks resulted in more online contacts but didn’t translate into genuine offline connections or a feeling of closeness. Indeed, not only is online contact experienced as less fun, but without face-to-face contact, social relationships decay and are soon replaced by others… “Emotional closeness declines by around 15 percent a year in the absence of face-to-face contact, so that in five years someone can go from being an intimate acquaintance to the most distant outer layer of your 150 friends,” says Dunbar.

The more time you spend online, the less time you spend with friends. The research shows for every email message you send or receive you can subtract a minute spent with loved ones.

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

People who spent more than five hours a week of their personal time online had less face-to-face contact with their strong ties. The authors of the study, inventor and social scientist Norman Nie, along with several Stanford colleagues, were clear: “For every personal e-mail message sent or received there is almost a 1 minute drop in the amount of time spent with family. With a mean of 13 personal emails sent and received, that amounts to about 13 minutes less of family time a day, or about 1.5 hours a week.… The more time spent on the internet, the less time spent with friends, family, and colleagues.”

In fact, looking to the net for social connections increases your feelings of isolation.

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

There is evidence that turning to the Internet for social connection may stir up feelings of isolation. One study in the early 2000s showed that New York women with non-invasive breast cancer who used their computers as a research tool reported feeling more socially supported than women who didn’t use the web. However, using their laptops to seek medical information was one thing. But the more time these women spent on the Internet, the lonelier they felt. This finding has surfaced in several studies and has been called the “Internet paradox,” because the web is supposed to connect us, right? Well, that depends on what you need. If it’s information, that’s one thing. If it’s the reassurance of a hug or of sharing a private joke in real time, that’s another.

When you use online time to arrange face-to-face meetings, it increases happiness. When you use it as a substitute it increases unhappiness.

(To learn the four rituals neuroscience says will make you happier, click here.)

Okay, relationships are vital and face-to-face is what really counts. But what kind of relationships do you want? For the answer, we need to take a quick trip to Sardinia…

3. You need a community

“Weak ties” help you find jobs. But they don’t help you through the tough times. To be happy and live longer you want strong bonds to a community of like-minded people who understand and care about you.

What does that have to do with Sardinia? Thank you for asking.

Men die younger than women. We just accept that as a fact of life. But it’s not true in Sardinia. Sardinia has ten times as many male centenarians as any place else on the globe.

Sardinia is a place with insanely strong social bonds. In fact, Susan Pinker had difficulty conducting interviews with the centenarians because there were always friends and family around when she was trying to talk to them.

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

Elsewhere, most men don’t make it to eighty, but once Sardinian men in this region have lived through their dangerous, risk-taking adolescent and young adult years, they tend to live as long as their wives and sisters— well into their nineties and even beyond. And there was another local mystery. Despite living hardscrabble lives as shepherds, farmers, and laborers in a rugged, inhospitable environment, Sardinians who were born and live in Villagrande and the surrounding villages are outlasting their fellow citizens in Europe and North America by as many as two or three decades…Currently, ten times as many men in Villagrande live past the age of one hundred as men who live elsewhere.

No, it’s not just genetics. Studies show genetics only accounts for 25% of longevity.

And it’s not the clean living. Loma Linda, California, is a disaster in terms of fresh air and water but its residents live 6 years longer than average. Guess why…

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

…the Loma Linda area boasts rates of perchlorate in its drinking water that are eighty-three times higher than the limits recommended by California’s Department of Health. It also has the worst ozone pollution in the nation, according to the American Lung Association. Yet Loma Linda’s residents live an average of six years longer than other Americans, in large part due to the social bonds among the Seventh-day Adventists who live there.

In a gargantuan study of 309,000 subjects, people who were actively involved in a community, playing a number of social roles, doubled their chances of survival over the 7 years of research.

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

Similar to Berkman and Syme’s first study, those who experienced various kinds of social contact increased their odds of survival— not just by a little, but by 91 percent, nearly doubling their odds of dodging the ultimate bullet for a long while. It wasn’t simply a question of living alone, or being married or single. What was important was being a part of a community in more ways than one— not just by being happily married, not only by belonging to clubs and groups, but by being involved in several of these activities and relationships at the same time…

Ever wonder why so many older Americans move to Florida? It’s actually quite smart. When you live near others who are similar to you and share the same issues you do, research shows you live longer.

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

To weather the inevitable indignities of advancing age, geographic proximity to close friends and confidantes is what really matters, according to research by Teresa Seeman and Lisa Berkman. Indeed, what the data tell us is that the elderly, and especially widowed people, live longer in places such as Villagrande or Boca Raton— where there are lots of residents of the same age with the same concerns— than they would if they lived among Brooklynites pushing baby strollers and riding fixed-gear bikes.

Religious people live longer. But it’s not the religion that does it, it’s increased social time that comes from the community.

And because of that, religion ends up being more powerful than Lipitor.

From The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

Having linked attendance at religious services to greater happiness and lower rates of cardiovascular disease and death, some epidemiologists have suggested that going to church is more effective than Lipitor, adding an average of two to three years to a person’s life.

Get to know your neighbors. It can save your life.

(To learn how to be happier and more successful, click here.)

So all those personal relationships matter a lot. But what about work? Turns out how you deal with the people around you can make you happier, healthier, and more productive…

From Google cofounder Sergey Brin's split from 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki to SpaceX founder Elon Musk's second divorce from actress Talulah Riley, the separation of several high-powered couples signals to some that extreme career success comes at the expense of relationship success. 

But relationship experts say this doesn't always ring true. You can have a successful marriage and balance high-powered careers — it just takes work.

Dr. Mike McNulty, a Master Certified Gottman Therapist, says maintaining a marital friendship, romance, and intimacy, managing ongoing conflict that is inevitable in marriage, and creating and maintaining a meaningful relationship is more challenging for partners with successful careers because they have less time to do so.

He says these couples are at more risk when the connection to the career becomes primary, and the commitment to and trust in the relationship becomes questionable. "Having a spouse addicted to work can feel like as much of a betrayal as extramarital affair to the other spouse," McNulty says.

But as research psychologist and couples counselor John Gottman explains in his book "What Makes Love Last," 40 years of research shows that trust and commitment are crucial to holding relationships together. "When both partners have a strong commitment to a relationship, this leads to a strong sense of trust, which makes love last," McNulty explains.

Here's how some of the most successful married couples keep their relationships strong:

SEE ALSO: Marriage under the spotlight — why successful people get divorced

DON'T MISS: 7 ways being married influences your success

1. They prioritize spending time together.

Handel Group co-president and life coach Laurie Gerber says shared experiences are key.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, for example, drew up a relationship agreement with his then-girlfriend and now wife Priscilla Chan when she moved to Palo Alto, California, several years ago. In it, he agreed to take her on a date once a week and spend 100 minutes of alone time each week with her outside the office or his apartment.

McNulty says creating rituals can help. "Rituals are more formal ways of connecting and ensure spouses reserve time for one another or their families and make specific plans to do the things they want to do," he explains.

Whether it's a weekly date night or a trip for just the immediate family, he says busy, successful partners have to be more careful with their time to make sure they connect with one another and enjoy the things that define or give meaning to their relationships.

2. Their time is spent doing good.

Gerber says it also helps if power couples spend time doing things outside of the ego.

Last year Zuckerberg and Chan launched the philanthropic LLC the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative together, and Bill and Melinda Gates have overseen their own foundation together since 2000. 

"People dedicated to making the world better or with a spiritual side seem to have more chance of success in partnership because they aren't depending on external factors only to feel good," she says.

3. They listen and empathize.

"Make time every day to talk with your spouse, in person or by phone, about one another's lives," McNulty says, noting that texting is often not enough.

"Focus on the stressful things or events that are important to your spouse. Listen. Help your spouse express his or her feelings. Empathize. Show support. Don't problem solve or fix. Most of us just want to be heard," he explains.

According to McNulty, Gottman's research shows that this kind of conversation is the one common thing that all successful couples do after marriage therapy.

In The Gottman Method of Couple Therapy, he says this kind of conversation is called a "stress reducing conversation.""Successful, busy couples' relationships will suffer if they fail to find a way to have this type of conversation on a regular basis," McNulty says.

These points are all broad principles. However, if your new relationship ticks the four boxes below, it's reasonable to assume it has the potential to be a nurturing, cohesive long-term partnership.

If your relationship doesn't tick these boxes, you may need to be more aware of whether your current feelings might change in the future.

SEE ALSO: Relationship experts reveal 6 secrets that help power couples stay together

1. You like each other's extreme traits

Which is more often true: "Opposites attract," or "Birds of a feather flock together?"

In general, it's the latter. People really do tend to partner with others who are similar to them and who share their values.  

Of course, this is a generalization. It's easy enough for us to think of relationships that work despite differences (e.g., Democrats and Republicans, vegetarians and meat-lovers, extroverts and introverts). Where shared inclinations and values tend to be most important, though, is if one or both partners is very extreme in a certain area.

For example, my spouse and I are both extremely frugal. We drive most other people nuts with our resistance to spending money. Most other potential partners would find either of us difficult to live with because we're on the extreme end of the normal curve in this regard.

Extreme opposite traits can initially attract you to someone — for example, a shy, quiet person attracted to someone who has hundreds of friends and is an expert social networker.

However, the more extreme the other person is in a particular regard, the more likely it is that you'll find your differences annoying in the future. Non-narcissists initially attracted to a narcissist's charm is one particularly common example of this pattern. 

When your partner has any extreme traits, you don't need to be as extreme as they are, but it's easier going forward if you're not the complete opposite.

2. Your partner is warm, trustworthy, and dependable

Everyone has their priorities for what they want in a partner. Some people value looks more than money or status, while for others, it's the reverse. But despite differences in people's particular ideals and priorities, almost everyone — both men and women — wants a partner who is warm, trustworthy, dependable, and reliable. 

If your partner is warm towards you and other people, that's a good sign. Likewise, if they're emotionally stable and dependable, that's also a good sign. If they're aloof or narcissistic towards others, but nice to you, that's a potential warning sign: Their treatment of others may be more revealing of their true colors.

3. You and your partner have roughly equal 'mate value'

Research shows that love isn't particularly subjective: Even relative strangers are usually fairly reliable in rating someone's "mate value," i.e., desirability. People also usually have a rough idea of their own mate value.

Problems can occur in relationships when the partners have vastly different objective mate value. We've all seen celebrity marriages in which an attractive, wealthy individual marries someone who doesn't appear to even have a job. Having a partner with lower mate value than yours may be initially attractive, but the sheen typically wears off after time (as we see when such celebrity couples break up).

The reality is that wealthy or attractive people tend to marry other wealthy or attractive people. One might imagine that everyone would want a partner with "10/10" mate value, but this is often stressful due to what evolutionary psychologists call fear of "mate poaching"— if your partner is, say, Maria Sharapova or Serena Williams, chances are you're going to be worried about losing your lover to a poacher. 

In general, then, having a partner who has roughly equal mate value to you typically makes for the smoothest, most enduring relationship.  

[Note: These are principles of evolutionary psychology. They can seem a bit crass in the modern world, but research shows that they are generally true.]

"We're going downtown, y'all!" says Nikki Osei, one of the six brides-to-be aboard a bus traveling down Manhattan's Sixth Avenue. "Are we going to Hudson Yards? Soho?"

When the double-decker reaches Houston Street, it turns right. "The High Line?! Are we getting married on the High Line?" 

The bus drives farther west until it arrives at the secret wedding venue. The six couples didn't plan the celebration — they only brought their suits, wedding dresses, and rings.

The rest was up to the PopBliss team, a pop-up wedding service that organizes group ceremonies. The company threw its first pop-up wedding in New York City on March 31; the next wedding will be in Atlanta in 2017.

"The element of surprise is often missing in traditional weddings, and the preparations are often intended to wow guests, not the couples. We want to wow everyone," Racquel Kristi, PopBliss' founder, tells Tech Insider.

Pop-up weddings promise to cut down on the excessive planning and cost of a typical wedding, which costs between $19,800 and $33,100 for the average American couple. 

PopBliss' two-day celebration was $5,000 for an all-inclusive package featuring invitations, hotel accommodations, make-up and hair stylists, bus transportation, a decorated venue, an officiant, photographers, tickets for 14 guests, catering, an open bar, a mini-cake, live singers, a DJ, a brunch before the wedding, and a party the evening before.

I tagged along for the first PopBliss wedding. Here's what ensued.

The six couples were chosen out of about 130 applicants. Kristi, who is a wedding planner by trade, said she looked for "cool, modern, courageous couples." The couples meet at the Trump Soho Hotel for a welcome party the evening before the wedding.

On the big day, the grooms and brides board double-decker tour buses. First, the couples ride to an undisclosed hotel for their "first looks."

Rebecca Taylor, who will renew her vows with Camille Smith, snaps a selfie.

Most of us have, at one point or another, experienced a moment, a day, or even an extended period of time when we felt like we were flat-out terrible at communicating.

Maybe someone didn’t understand your intentions. Or the conversations didn’t turn out how you desired. Or the results you requested didn’t come in as expected.

You can try and point the finger at something else, but if you’ve noticed a consistent pattern of communication failures with different people, odds are it’s something you’re doing.

(And even if you are a pretty good at expressing yourself, you could always stand to be a little better.)

Here are five common errors and all the ways you can start fixing them today:

SEE ALSO: 25 changes to make in your 20s to set yourself up for lifelong success

1. You don’t pay attention

You know what you want to get across — and to be honest, that’s the only half of the conversation you’re really focused on. As a result, you’re only half-hearing what the people around you are saying and you aren’t engaging effectively in the conversation.

The solution

Paying attention to other people and truly listening to what they have to say is critical to achieving a mutual understanding and conversational flow. Now, there’s a lot of advice on how to look engaged, like making frequent eye contact or nodding your head in agreement.

But my favorite tip is to worry less about seeming interested, and actually tune in. As Celeste Headlee said in a recent TED talk, "There is no reason to learn how to show you're paying attention if you are in fact paying attention."

So, minimize distractions and put your phone away. Test yourself by trying to restate the other person’s point with a phrase like "If I understand what you’re saying …"

2. You don’t get to the point

You’re either droning on and on about something irrelevant, or you’re otherwise sharing details that aren’t necessary. As a result, your meaning is skewed and the other person loses interest.

The solution

Try to communicate as briefly and concisely as possible. This is effective for a number of reasons. First, it forces you to understand what you’re really trying to get across: If you don’t allow yourself any room to ramble or veer off-topic, you’ll stick to the most important information.

Second, it reduces the possibility for miscommunication. If you only write two sentences, it’s a lot harder to lose your meaning than if you wrote six paragraphs. Third, it shows respect for the other person’s time. Finally, it encourages reciprocity.

By being more succinct, you’ll encourage others in your organization or group to be similarly concise. So, whether you’re writing an email or preparing to give a speech, ask yourself if you can cut any additional fluff.

Related: 5 Tips for Writing Shorter Emails That Don't Come Across as Rude or Abrupt

3. You don’t encourage two-way communication

If you’re a boss who only gives commands, or an employee who never asks questions, you’re closing the door on meaningful dialogue. Most work requires some form of an exchange, and you don’t want to be seen as unapproachable.

The solution

I’m not suggesting you respond to every single email, or that you have to mandate two questions be asked for every task you assign. Instead, focus on making people feel welcome to ask questions or provide more information.

Hint: One way to encourage this behavior is to model it. If you take the first step, other people will feel more comfortable doing the same.

In the new book "All the Single Ladies," writer Rebecca Traister chronicles the history of American singlehood and interviews over 100 unmarried women from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds.

Her goal: exploring how social progress connects to changing marriage patterns, and what that means for American single women today.

In addition to companionship, "marriage has been a useful institution for determining power, gender roles, and who does what," Traister tells Tech Insider.

Today, more Americans are choosing to hold off on marriage or forgo it altogether: For the first time in history, the marriage rate dropped below 50% in 2009, she writes in her book.

Marriage is now just one of many paths women can take. The modern phenomena of delaying marriage has also transformed marriage itself, Traister says.

Single women, rather than men, play a special role in these changes, because it's now normal to be a thriving single lady. (For the most part, men have always had the choice to live independently, she says.)

Here are a few ways marriage for heterosexual couples is changing, according to Traister.

Women hold a higher standard for male partners.

"As more people live independently, marriage means something else for women," Traister says.

Women are no longer dependent on marriage (and men) for economic stability, children, or social support. They can now have all of these things without ever tying the knot. If and when women do marry, they have a higher bar for their male partners, Traister says.

"It's harder to find a human who is going to make your life better — both economically and emotionally," she says. 

Men are becoming more domestically capable.

Most men have always had the freedom to live independent lives, but if they were married, household duties would often fall to women, Traister says.

Over time, women’s changing responsibilities have also changed men's outlook on their own responsibilities, Traister says. The book points to sociologist Kathleen Gerson’s research, which says that 80% of women and 70% of men "desire egalitarian marriages in which wage earning, domestic duties, and childcare are divided equally."

It's no longer assumed that women will take care of these things.

"If and when men parent, there's a better chance they can hang pictures, cook pasta, vacuum the floors," she says. "And I don't treat that lightly."

Relationships are more equitable.

Sharing laundry responsibilities may seem like a small change, but Traister says an equitable household can translate to a more equitable marriage and society.

Women are living independently outside of marriage as equals, she says.

"Men and women are now colleagues, or friends going out for a beer — They share music tastes, talk about politics, and have sex without five decades of legal matrimony," Traister says. "We are living in the world as peers."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's what popular dog breeds looked like before and after 100 years of breeding

Most people would think if it's not good looks that make a man most attractive to women, then it's definitely a sense of humor.

But studies show that altruism is actually a quality women are especially drawn to when they are looking for a relationship.

One study, published January 2016 in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, presented 202 women with different men to choose from. The different combinations of choices were either attractive or not, and they either did a good deed or didn't.

The women chose the selfish, attractive men for a one-night stand. But for a long-term relationship, they chose the altruistic man whether he was attractive or not.

Another study, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science in July 2015, analyzed Germans' responses to a large annual survey.

Single people who reported doing good deeds were much more likely to say they were in a relationship the next year. They also found a partner in less time than their nonaltruistic peers.

That's not to say other traits don't matter. Humor is also important to women selecting a mate, researchers have found. It makes women assume a man is more intelligent.

A sense of humor is a good indicator of sexual activity, too. In one study, men who women rated as funnier reported having more sex with more partners.

For building long-term relationships, though, altruism is consistently found to be a crucial and highly desirable trait.

Another study, published in The Journal of Social Psychology in 2013, found that women valued altruism above other traits as a measure of whether a potential mate would make a good parent. They also said altruism was important for short-term relationships, but significantly more women said the trait mattered for the long-term.

Researchers have yet to pin humor head-to-head against altruism. It's also important to keep in mind that many of these studies are small, and that people often behave differently in real life than they do in a lab setting, or when responding to a survey.

But no matter what, if you're a man seeking a woman — especially for a long-term partnership — helping others can't hurt.

SEE ALSO: Americans are staying single longer than ever, and it’s changing modern marriage in 3 major ways

Join the conversation about this story »

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Thinking about tying the knot? You're probably wondering if — and how — such a big commitment will impact your relationship.

A friend who knows I'm in a long-term relationship recently sent me a New York Times' opinion piece titled "13 Questions To Ask Before Getting Married." What she probably doesn't know is that she sent me on an entirely different research mission: to see what we know about the effect marriage actually has on peoples' happiness.

Sure, you may have heard that married people report being happier overall over their lifetimes than single folks, or that people tend to say they're more "satisfied" with life just after their weddings.

But is it actually the act of marriage that's causing those benefits?

Probably not.

In fact, there's loads of evidence to the contrary: A 2012 study found that couples who lived together but were not married had higher self-esteem and were happier overall than their counterparts who were married. A 2011 review of the impact of happiness on major life events found that couples who got married generally felt less happy and less satisfied over time than couples who had not.

More importantly to me than all these negative studies, however, was a recent bright spot in the research which suggests that it isn't marriage that's the key to happiness, but the quality of the relationship itself.

A 2014 working paper from the National Bureau of Economics Research found that if the person you call your partner (or significant other, or whatever) is also the person you see as your best friend, you don't actually need to be married to reap the benefits of a long-term relationship. And it's this factor, rather than getting married (or not) that appears to matter the most for happiness.

'Maybe what is really important is friendship'

For their 2014 paper, the researchers' initial findings appeared to support the "if marriage, then happiness" idea: They found that couples who were married tended to have higher happiness levels than couples who were not.

But the second part of that finding threw it out the window: It turned out that the couples who were best friends and lived together were just as happy as couples who were best friends and married. In other words, marriage didn't appear to matter much at all.

To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers studied three separate data sets that included information about thousands of couples: The United Kingdom's Annual Population Survey, the British Household Panel Survey, and the Gallup World Poll. Then, they controlled for couples' age, gender, income, and health conditions (all of which could potentially affect their results).

Here's a chart from the study comparing the "life satisfaction" of couples who were married (blue bars) with couples who lived together but were unmarried (red bars). Couples who said their partner was their best friend are on the left.

People in a relationship who saw their significant other as their best friend and either lived with that person or married them were happier than couples who saw their best friend as someone outside of the relationship.

"What immediately intrigued me about the results was to rethink marriage as a whole," University of British Columbia economics professor and study coauthor John Helliwell recently told the New York Times. "Maybe what is really important is friendship, and to never forget that in the push and pull of daily life."

This study isn't the first to arrive at this finding.

Other research backs the idea that marriage isn't the key to happiness

In 2012, four authors published a statistical analysis and summary of 18 studies of people who wed and eight of couples who divorced. Social psychologist Bella DePaulo recently took another look at that meta-analysis in a blog post for Psychology Today.

Here's what the authors found, DePaulo writes:

"Except for that initial short-lived honeymoon effect for life satisfaction, getting married did not result in getting happier or more satisfied. In fact, for life satisfaction and relationship satisfaction, the trajectories over time headed in the less satisfied direction."

But that's not all.

"What is really remarkable about the combined findings of the 18 studies," writes DePaulo, "is that the designs were biased in favor of making marriage look good. At least 11 of the studies included only those people who got married and stayed married."

In other words, the results of this larger paper can't tell us a whole lot about the results of marriage. Rather, they really only give us insight into what happens to people who get married and stay married. We don't know much about what happens to those who get married and then get divorced or separate.

"Too many social scientists simply are not going to give up on the claim that getting married makes you happier," DePaulo writes.

For another 2012 study (this one a survey of American couples), researchers found that couples who lived together but were not married had higher self-esteem and were happier overall than their married counterparts. Both types of relationships, however, were still linked with increases in overall well-being. Other studies suggest that marriage might even be more closely linked with negative outcomes than positive ones: A 2011 review of the impact on happiness of major life events found that couples who got married generally felt less happy and less satisfied with their lives over time.

The key takeaway here? Find a partner you consider your best friend. And don't worry so much about the other stuff.

UP NEXT: Giving thanks could be the key to lasting relationships

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NOW WATCH: The simplest way to get — and stay — happy, according to psychologists

Overworked and under-loved, the young innovators of Silicon Valley now have a local startup that wants to help them make the most of their relationships.

Although their day jobs may involve disrupting the tech industry, tech workers don’t want their relationships disrupted by their own inattentiveness caused by the focus they place on career pursuits.

The hardworking men of Silicon Valley are known for missing dates and forgetting special occasions.

Fortunately for them, a new startup is on hand to help make life, and love, easier.

Dan Sullivan, a 27-year-old venture capitalist, has started a subscription service known as BetterBoyfriend.me, which offers to provide a present each month for a member’s wife or girlfriend for the cost of $70.

The service, which has been in test (or beta) mode thus far, already has 350 boyfriends and husbands signed up, generating $17,000 per month as a result, reports the Guardian. Sullivan claims that most of his sign-ups are men who work in the tech industry for companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook.

In return for the monthly subscription, members get to choose from a list of seven possible gifts (including chocolate, tea sets, manicures), which then get delivered in an unbranded, unlabeled package straight to the men.

You may be thinking that it sounds like the perfect crime, but Sullivan claims that around half of the women are aware of his company’s involvement in their relationships. “It’s correlated with age. I think after you’ve been married a while you don’t keep many secrets,” he told the Guardian.

Such is the importance of his role in the lives of these absent-minded romantics, that Sullivan claims he’s transcended the business-client model to become more of a relationship coach for his customers.

Something akin to a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac (who coached Christian to woo Roxane), albeit with a more materialistic approach to courtship. The key, according to Sullivan, is to remember that “his relationship is with the boyfriend.”

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Consumer Reports just rated Samsung's new Galaxy phone better than the iPhone

Who you hang out with matters more than you may think.

In fact, your friendships could have a major impact on your net worth.

After researching the daily habits of wealthy people for five years, author Thomas C. Corley found that they avoid one type of person at all costs: pessimists.

"Self-made millionaires are very particular about who they associate with," Corley writes in his book, "Change Your Habits, Change Your Life.""You are only as successful as those you frequently associate with. The rich are always on the lookout for individuals who are goal-oriented, optimistic, enthusiastic, and who have an overall positive mental outlook."

Eighty-six percent of the rich people in his study made a habit out of associating with other success-minded individuals. On the flip side, "they also make a point to limit their exposure to toxic, negative people," he explains.

The importance of substituting negative friends and acquaintances for positive individuals stems from the fact that positivity was a hallmark of the rich people he studied — and we emulate the people we associate with.

"Long-term success is only possible when you have a positive mental outlook," Corley states.

He's not the only one to suggest that negativity derails success — or that your relationships could affect your financial success.

Nearly a century ago, journalist Napoleon Hill drew similar conclusions after researching over 500 self-made millionaires. "Men take on the nature and the habits and the power of thought of those with who they associate," he wrote in his 1937 bestseller, "Think and Grow Rich," and "there is no hope of success for the person who repels people through a negative personality."

The bottom line: Negativity will derail you from pursuing success, and like attracts like. Avoid the pessimists and start hanging out with the optimists.

SEE ALSO: 13 habits of self-made millionaires, from a man who spent 5 years studying rich people

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NOW WATCH: Tony Robbins reviews DJ Khaled's keys to success

Exactly why so many humans choose monogamous pair bonds over juggling multiple partners has long been a mystery to scientists.

After all, having several partners at the same time should lead to more offspring — an outcome you’d think evolution would favor. Now a new study has linked the phenomenon to sexually transmitted diseases, arguing that monogamy could have evolved because it offered protection against the threat of infection.

Monogamy is, of course, the norm in Western societies. But there are many cultures where a husband can have more than one wife (polygyny) or, less commonly, a wife can have more than one husband (polyandry). This diversity of human mating systems is also hard to explain. What we do know, however, is that many hunter-gatherer societies, living in small groups, were most often polygynous (and many remaining groups still are). But with the rise of agriculture, societies tended to become more complex — and less polygynous. In the most strictly monogamous societies, there was often a social punishment for polygynists, either informally or, as in many modern societies, through a legal system.

Many explanations for this evolution have been put forward, including changes to the way that women chose their partners, such as being faithful to men who invested in provisioning for them. Another possibility is that groups of monogamists may have performed better than groups of polygynists. But the new research adds a further option: could an increased risk of infection from sexually transmitted infections associated with polygyny have contributed to — or even driven — the overall move from polygyny to monogamy?

Sexually transmitted diseases have been infecting humans for a long time. Prior to modern medicine, they also often caused significant harm — especially to the reproductive system. Clearly, these diseases infect polygynists more than monogamists, and it has been argued that when a polygynist and a serial monogamist have the same number of partners overall, the polygynist is more likely to pick up a dose of something nasty than the monogamist. According to computer modelling, this is because contact networks are more connected when you have concurrent partners than when you have serial partner change.

Either way, overall, these effects could have had a big enough impact on the well-being of polygynists to allow monogamous individuals to take over a population.

The challenges of modelling

It’s certainly a good argument. But it’s hard to assess how likely it is to be true. This is because we know very little about the risk of sexually transmitted diseases in hunter-gatherer societies or historical societies transitioning to agriculture. This is a common problem in science: we can only make progress when we can test an idea, but plausible ideas are sometimes very hard to evaluate without massive effort.

One option in these cases is to do your experiment in the form of a computer simulation. This is what the researchers behind the new study did, modelling the impact of a bacterial sexually transmitted disease similar to gonorrhoea or chlamydia. Their results strongly back the hypothesis that such diseases could have triggered monogamy.

In their model, sexually transmitted diseases tend to “fade out” from small groups such as polygynist hunter-gatherers. This occurs because of random chance events that are more likely to be important in small groups, such as all the infected people suddenly getting better or dying. In larger, agricultural groups, however, such fade-out is much less likely, so sexually transmitted diseases tend to persist, damaging the health and reducing the birth rates of polygynists while allowing monogamists to take over.

What’s more, the monogamists that are most likely to take over a group for a long period are those that follow a “punishment strategy”, which fits with what we observe in many societies today.

So is the puzzle solved? Not quite yet. Computer simulations are useful and can tell us important things, but they are always limited and necessarily simplify the real world. In this case, for example, the researchers assumed that the disease they were modelling had similar pathological effects on men and women, whereas in reality many sexually transmitted diseases affect women more severely than men, potentially changing the effect of the disease on polygynists.

Further questions are raised by research into sexually transmitted diseases in animals, which hasn’t really found a clear relationship between promiscuity and disease. In fact, computer modelling work focused on animals has found that promiscuous and monogamous individuals can coexist even in the presence of a dangerous disease. What’s more, there are examples of highly promiscuous animals which are heavily infected with sexually transmitted diseases yet carry on regardless (two-spot ladybirds in Continental Europe are one example, believe it or not).

As the researchers themselves point out, there are indeed some challenges associated with this idea. More detailed simulations or better data on sexually transmitted infections in societies where people live in small groups would make the picture clearer. For now, it remains an intriguing and plausible suggestion that we should explore further. Given the continuing threats posed by sexually transmitted diseases today it’s surprising that it’s taken this long for someone to put two and two together and suggest that the advent of monogamy may have served a very practical purpose.

Rob Knell, Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

NEXT: If you're getting married because you think it'll make you happy, you might want to reconsider

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NOW WATCH: A relationship expert reveals the best ways to get over someone

Most friendships develop so naturally that you don't even realize how or when they started.

Sometimes, though, you want to make an effort to befriend a new acquaintance or become a better friend to existing pals.

To help you out on that front, we scoured the psychological research to find science-backed strategies to get people to like you.

Read on to find out how to develop better relationships faster.

This is an update of an article originally written by Maggie Zhang.

SEE ALSO: 12 things you're doing that make people dislike you immediately

1. Copy them

This strategy is called mirroring, and involves subtly mimicking the other person's behavior. When talking to someone, try copying their body language, gestures, and facial expressions.

In 1999, New York University researchers documented the "chameleon effect," which occurs when people unconsciously mimic each other's behavior, and that mimicry facilitates liking.

Researchers had 78 men and women work on a task with a partner, who was really a confederate working for the researchers. The partners engaged in different levels of mimicry, while researchers secretly videotaped the interactions. At the end of the interaction, the researchers had participants indicate how much they liked those partners.

Sure enough, participants were more likely to say that they liked their partner when their partner had mimicked their behavior.

2. Spend more time around them

According to the mere-exposure effect, people tend to like things that are familiar to them.

Knowledge of this phenomenon dates back to the 1950s, when MIT researchers discovered that college students who lived closer together in housing projects were more likely to be friends than students who lived farther apart.

This could be because students who live close by can experience more passive, day-to-day interactions with each other, such as greeting each other in the common room or kitchen. Under certain circumstances, those interactions can develop into full-fledged friendships.

More recently, psychologists at the University of Pittsburgh had four women pose as students in a university psychology class. Each woman showed up in class a different number of times. When experimenters showed male students pictures of the four women, the men demonstrated a greater affinity for those women they'd seen more often in class — even though they hadn't interacted with any of them.

Taken together, these findings suggest that simply spending more time with people can make them like you more. Even if you don't live near your friends, try sticking to a steady routine with them, such as going out for coffee every week or taking a class together.

3. Compliment other people

People will associate the adjectives you use to describe other people with your personality. This phenomenon is called spontaneous trait transference.

One study found that this effect occurred even when people knew certain traits didn't describe the people who had talked about them.

According to Gretchen Rubin, author of books including "The Happiness Project,""whatever you say about other people influences how people see you."

If you describe someone else as genuine and kind, people will also associate you with those qualities. The reverse is also true: If you are constantly trashing people behind their backs, your friends will start to associate the negative qualities with you as well.

Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist and author of "Anatomy of Love," put happy couples in long-term relationships into brain scanners. The results gave her an insight into what makes a relationship last.

Produced by Kevin Reilly. Camera by Grace Raver.

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Relationships are never easy. By definition they entail connections between people, and people, as we all know, are eternally complicated creatures.

Relationships also come in all sizes and colors — there are romantic relationships, work relationships, and friendships, just to name a few. 

Regardless of what kind of relationship you want to strengthen, each is fundamentally similar to the next in a number of ways.

In all healthy relationships, we are able to listen well, empathize, connect, resolve conflict, and respect others.

The following TED Talks are a great refresher course in doing all that. 

Andrew Solomon's 'Love, no matter what'

Through interviewing parents of exceptional children for several years, the author of "Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity" says he has come to understand that everyone is different in some fundamental way, and this core human condition of being different is, ironically, what unites us all.

Solomon explains that all people who love each other struggle to accept each other and grapple with the question, "What's the line between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance?"

Using a number of poignant anecdotes, he helps unpack this question.

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Yann Dall'Aglio's 'Love — you're doing it wrong'

Dall'Aglio, a French philosopher and author of "A Rolex at 50: Do you have the right to miss your life?" and "I love you: Is love a has been?," says love is the desire of being desired. But in a world that often favors the self over others, how can people find the tenderness and connection they crave?

It may be easier than you think: "For a couple who is no longer sustained, supportedby the constraints of tradition, I believe that self-mockeryis one of the best means for the relationship to endure," he says.

In this surprisingly convincing talk, Dall'Aglio explains how acknowledging our uselessness could be the key to sustaining healthy relationships.

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Jenna McCarthy's 'What you don't know about marriage'

Fiction and non-fiction author McCarthy writes about relationships, marriage, and parenting in books including "If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon," and in her TED Talk, shares some surprising research on how marriages really work.

One study might even entice husbands to do more housework.

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People in relationships have their own strange ways of interacting with each other.

Sometimes they share way too much information, other times they fight in code, or communicate without talking at all. And the two-person planet couples live on can often be totally absurd to their friends, especially when things aren't going great.

Now there's an Instagram dedicated to chronicling that ridiculousness, aptly titled "We should break up." The account was started by Elan Gale, the "Bachelor" producer who also runs the "Texts from your ex" and "Tinder nightmares" accounts. While we don't know for sure that all of these are real, they definitely capture those times when couples make you say "ugh."

Here are 38 of the most ridiculous texts couples have sent each other:

SEE ALSO: 39 of the most hilariously terrible Tinder chats

But sleeping is fun.

A photo posted by Unspirational (@weshouldbreakup) on Jan 18, 2016 at 3:16pm PST

The dreaded dot dot dot.

A photo posted by Unspirational (@weshouldbreakup) on Jun 10, 2015 at 9:47pm PDT

Back to what matters.

A photo posted by Unspirational (@weshouldbreakup) on Dec 11, 2015 at 5:42pm PST

Making friends can seem easy when you’re young.

You encounter more new people and have more free time when you’re first venturing out into the world than when you’re more likely to be settled down with a steady job, a long-term partner and children.

New research suggests that our social networks may shrink from when we’re about 25, after which we tend to lose more friends and acquaintances than we gain.

But there’s also an important difference between men and women, with men likely to make more contacts in their youth but lose them more rapidly as they age.

The study, carried out by scientists at Oxford and Aalto universities and published in Royal Society Open Science, looked at the phone call records of 3.2m mobile users across in Europe.

Collected in 2007, the data included the age and gender of the mobile users and the people they called, how often they called each person and the length of each call.

Downhill from 25

The research showed that people aged 25 and under talked on their phones more than any other age group, which suggests that people might become less socially connected with age. This echoes other research on face-to-face social networks that suggests that our social networks shrink as we age.

The big life events that usually come with age, such as marriage and parenthood, lead people to invest more of their time socializing with just a few close family members and friends. Later in life, retirement, health issues and the death of partners and friends can leave people socially isolated, although this can sometimes inspire older people to engage more with their community through volunteering and religious participation.

But there could be other explanations for the fact that older people tend to call fewer friends on their mobiles. For one thing, older adults use mobile technology far less than younger people, and the new study didn’t capture data on landline phone calls and meeting in person.

Things also get more complex when you look at the data by gender. Among the under 40s, men contacted more people than women, but after 40 this gender difference reversed. And even though younger men made calls to more people than women, women spent more time talking to the people they called.

Again, these patterns mirror what we’ve learned from studying other kinds of social interaction, including face-to-face meetings. Women tend to invest more time in one-on-one interactions with others, whereas men tend to prefer interacting in groups. Our evolutionary roots may drive these differences: In our evolutionary history, females relied on their partners and a few key people to assist with child rearing, whereas males were attracted to larger groups that could help with hunting.

The other pattern that emerged from studying the mobile phone records was in the people receiving the calls. Under 40s most often made calls to people their own age, while those aged 50 and older frequently called people a generation younger than them. The researchers speculated that this may be the result of older adults mostly using mobile phones to call their adult children - who may have even bought their parents their mobile phones.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, each person’s most frequent and longest calls tended to be with an opposite-sex person who was the same age - most likely their partner. Taken together, these findings suggest that people were socializing the most with their partners and family members, particularly in older generations.

Changing communication

There are limits to what mobile phone data can tell us about people’s relationships. In this case, the researchers could only speculate about whom participants were contacting based on their age and gender. Mobile phone use has changed dramatically in the years since these data was collected, and people increasingly use messaging apps such as WhatsApp to communicate. And even though people frequently socialize on their mobile phones, our screen time still only represents a small sliver of our social behavior.

But this research does suggest that the way we use our mobile devices to connect with others changes throughout our lives, in much the same way other forms of social behavior do. Humans have a strong need to seek connections with each other but we adapt the way we fulfil this need to our changing life circumstances.

Sarah Gomillion, Postdoctoral research fellow in social psychology, University of Aberdeen. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

SEE ALSO: 17 psychological tricks to make people like you immediately

MORE: There could be a surprising evolutionary reason that we're monogamous

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If you feel like a slimeball working the room and handing out business cards at an industry event, you're not alone.

In 2014, researchers found scientific evidence of a phenomenon many of us had already experienced: Professional networking can make us feel dirty. But the more powerful you are, the less dirty you feel.

For example, the researchers surveyed lawyers at a North American business law firm. Results showed that senior members of the firm were less likely than junior members to associate professional networking with words like "dirty" and "ashamed."

In a new article for The Harvard Business Review, the researchers write that these findings make logical sense. "When people believe they have a lot to offer others, such as wise advice, mentorship, access, and resources, networking feels easier and less selfish."

That's why the key to feeling more comfortable with networking is thinking of yourself as someone with something to give.

One way to help others, no matter your status in an organization, is simply to express gratitude. The authors write that "the more heartfelt the expression of gratitude, the greater its value to the recipient."

Say you praise your boss to your coworkers and superiors, explaining how you've grown with their help. That could in turn help your boss and bolster their reputation around the office.

The researchers also point out that young professionals may know more than their senior colleagues about generational trends and new markets and technologies. Sharing this valuable knowledge with your more seasoned coworkers is another way to reciprocate a favor.

The main idea here is that you don't have to offer people something tangible, like a career advice or a job opening.

Think about where your expertise lies and how you can share that knowledge with other people. Moreover, consider how you can give back to those who have helped you in a way that could potentially improve their career.

In fact, some would say that figuring out how you can help those you're networking with isn't just a bonus — it's crucial. 

According to Dave Kerpen, founder and CEO of Likeable Local, the very first question you should ask when you meet an influential person is, "How can I help you?" (Of course, you should already have some idea of how you can provide assistance.)

Kerpen says that, even if the person doesn't take you up on your offer, they'll feel warmer toward you and will be more likely to help you when you need it.

Ultimately, knowing that your relationships are always a two-way street should make you feel slightly less slimy about your interactions.

SEE ALSO: 5 common networking mistakes pros never make

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 5 networking secrets to help you get ahead

Most friendships develop so naturally that you don't even realize how or when they started.

Sometimes, though, you want to make an effort to befriend a new acquaintance or become a better friend to existing pals.

To help you out on that front, we scoured the psychological research to find science-backed strategies to get people to like you.

Read on to find out how to develop better relationships faster.

This is an update of an article originally written by Maggie Zhang.

SEE ALSO: 12 things you're doing that make people dislike you immediately

1. Copy them

This strategy is called mirroring, and involves subtly mimicking the other person's behavior. When talking to someone, try copying their body language, gestures, and facial expressions.

In 1999, New York University researchers documented the "chameleon effect," which occurs when people unconsciously mimic each other's behavior, and that mimicry facilitates liking.

Researchers had 78 men and women work on a task with a partner, who was really a confederate working for the researchers. The partners engaged in different levels of mimicry, while researchers secretly videotaped the interactions. At the end of the interaction, the researchers had participants indicate how much they liked those partners.

Sure enough, participants were more likely to say that they liked their partner when their partner had mimicked their behavior.

2. Spend more time around them

According to the mere-exposure effect, people tend to like things that are familiar to them.

Knowledge of this phenomenon dates back to the 1950s, when MIT researchers discovered that college students who lived closer together in housing projects were more likely to be friends than students who lived farther apart.

This could be because students who live close by can experience more passive, day-to-day interactions with each other, such as greeting each other in the common room or kitchen. Under certain circumstances, those interactions can develop into full-fledged friendships.

More recently, psychologists at the University of Pittsburgh had four women pose as students in a university psychology class. Each woman showed up in class a different number of times. When experimenters showed male students pictures of the four women, the men demonstrated a greater affinity for those women they'd seen more often in class — even though they hadn't interacted with any of them.

Taken together, these findings suggest that simply spending more time with people can make them like you more. Even if you don't live near your friends, try sticking to a steady routine with them, such as going out for coffee every week or taking a class together.

3. Compliment other people

People will associate the adjectives you use to describe other people with your personality. This phenomenon is called spontaneous trait transference.

One study found that this effect occurred even when people knew certain traits didn't describe the people who had talked about them.

According to Gretchen Rubin, author of books including "The Happiness Project,""whatever you say about other people influences how people see you."

If you describe someone else as genuine and kind, people will also associate you with those qualities. The reverse is also true: If you are constantly trashing people behind their backs, your friends will start to associate the negative qualities with you as well.