A friend is a broad term to elaborate but things suddenly seem less frightening when we start considering who is our best friend. Though, at times we all doubt even the loyalty of our besties. They can be a very loud mouth at times and hurt our pride more than we could consider it in it’s-okay-zone. However, researchers say that it is all in good faith in the end.

The science behind it

This new research affirms that your closest friends who are not afraid to speak out their mind and be politically correct all the time are the ones that truly love you. According to the research published in Psychological Science, there is a type of people who believe that bitter words have a lasting and more persuasive effect than the lovely ones which would eventually help their friends in the long run. These negative emotions become the breeding ground for development.

The research included 140 participants to go through hypothetical situations, at the University of Plymouth. They gave these people situations in which they had to become the friend of a friend in need; to say a few things to a friend who didn’t prepare for his exams and spent his free time procrastinating.

This perspective of being a guardian, that also from a third person view, made most of them to pick negative emotions (something like a hard hand of a thoughtful father) to spread to the person in question and make them realize his mistake. And they all believed to be doing this in good faith.

Cruelty is kindness (in this case, of course)

The research concluded that there is a beauty-and-the-beast reality in life where cruelty has care and concern in its heart. Your best friends become “cruel to be kind”. Lopez-Perez, the lead author of the research, stated that “people hold very specific expectations about the effects that certain emotions may have and about which emotions may be for achieving different goals.” This conscious choice of choosing those harsh words was something that came as a surprise for the scientists.

In India, it is especially not difficult to spot a person from a close relation to be overly concerned about that the steps that we take. Perhaps it is time to calibrate our perspective to see who is actually the one that really wants the best for us and go on to the lengths of sabotaging the relationship. Try making them feel happy by tagging this post to them and build a better relationship.