A new study has revealed that boys who show more empathy toward girls are most likely to get more attracted by the girls than the boys who have low empathetic level. Study has said that the adolescent males and females select empathetic classmates as friends.

The observations by the researches showed that the boys with higher cognitive empathy attracted an average of 1.8 more girl friendships than the low empathy counterparts. The study has also found that girls likely to nominate empathetic boys as friends.

Cognitive Empathy is defined as capacity to comprehend the emotions of another person, according to the researchers.

The researchers, while claiming that in exact opposite scenario, girls with empathetic qualities, said, “did not attract the greater number of opposite sex friends”.

For the research the team observed 1,970 students in Queensland and New South Wales with the average of 15.7 years.

Joseph Ciarocchi, professor at Australian Catholic University said, “Friends are essential to positive adolescent development. It's well established that in addition to providing companionship, close friendships promote the development of interpersonal skills, learning, and growth. Having friends has also been linked with lower rates of depression and, to people feeling good about themselves”.

In the process, the team asked the students to nominate five males and five females of their closest friends in the same year. The more friendship nominations the boy received from either boys or girls the more they felt supported by their friends. On the other hand the number of friendship nominations received by girls, had no effect on their felt support by friends.

By Prajakt K.