Guys are more clique-y than girls. It’s the truth

If you think you left the cliques behind in high school, think again.

When it comes to building friendships, men are more likely to return to their clique-y roots than women, according to a recent study published in the journal PLOS One.

Researchers found that, in general, men seek to join all-male cliques, clubs or teams, while women prefer a more select, one-on-one relationship with a few close female friends.

“Much of male friendship is about coalition building,” said Tamas David-Barett, lead author of the research paper, and member of the experimental psychology department at the University of Oxford.

After analyzing the profile pictures of nearly 112,000 Facebook users worldwide, David-Barett and his co-authors found that men were more likely to post a profile picture showing themselves with a large group of male friends. The study notes that such pictures are “arguably an essential element of the male-male coalition competition.”

Conversely, women almost never posted a large group profile picture, but tended to display a photo with only one other female friend. As the paper explained, women “appear more often to focus their social capital on only one person at a time.”

So why are men and women different in the way they make friends? One hypothesis is the difference between the male and female brain.

Typically, women tend to have a larger deep limbic system than their male counterparts. The limbic system is a network of nerves in the brain connected to instinct and mood. The limbic system controls basic emotions such as happiness and fear. Because this system tends to be larger in women, females are more in touch with their feelings and have an increased ability to connect individually with others.

According to the Wall Street Journal, other research indicates that females tend to build friendships off of emotional connections and are more apt to share intimate conversations. The male friendship, however, is established by doing things together, such as watching the game or hosting a barbecue.

“Female friendships are characterized as more face-to-face. Women want to share and exchange,” said Irene Levine, a friendship expert. “They want to bond. Men, however, want to do things together. They want to go to spectator sports; they want to participate in sports together. They do things that are more side-by-side.”