It may appear that the friends you make in primary school will be your best friends for life, but how many of them do you still see? How many of them had you already shed by the time you got to secondary school? A long-term study conducted by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) recently revealed that dissimilarity frequently breaks up early adolescent friendships. According to FAU professor Brett Laursen, "it causes conflict, interferes with cooperative activities and shared pleasures, and it creates circumstances in which one friend bears more costs, such as the friend who is less aggressive, or receives more benefits, such as the friend who has lower social status than the other." Dissimilarity shatters interperso