Almost half of first-year students think they have fewer friends than their peers, a new UBC-Harvard study suggests.

In surveying more than 1,000 UBC students, researchers found that 48 per cent of first-years believed other students had made more friends that year that they did, while only 31 per cent believed they had more friends.

No suprise: Students who felt like they had fewer friends than their peers felt worse about themselves, and that feeling held them back from making new friends.

sa国际传媒淲e think students are motivated to make more friends if they think their peers only have one or two more friends than they do,sa国际传媒� said study lead author Ashley Whillans, a Harvard Business School business professor who carried out the research with UBC PhD candidate Frances Chena. sa国际传媒淏ut if they feel like the gap is too big, itsa国际传媒檚 almost as if they give up and feel it isnsa国际传媒檛 even worth trying.sa国际传媒�

Those feelings of inadequacy are probably linked to how public students lives are because of all the communal space in universities, as well as social media.

sa国际传媒淪ince social activities, like eating or studying with others, tend to happen in cafes and libraries where they are easily seen, students might overestimate how much their peers are socializing because they donsa国际传媒檛 see them eating and studying alone,sa国际传媒� said Chen.

sa国际传媒淭hese feelings and perceptions are probably the strongest when people first enter a new social environment, but most of us probably experience them at some point in our lives.sa国际传媒�