Friendship Quizzes: Eight Short Tests of How You Make, Keep and Lose Friends

Each quiz on this site was written to make one idea from the friendship research answerable about yourself in a few minutes. The friendship style quiz sorts you into one of seven archetypes based on how you naturally form and maintain friendships, informed by Robin Dunbar's work on network layers and Jeffrey Hall's 2018 research on the hours friendship takes. The social battery quiz is built on the difference between introversion — a preference about energy — and shyness, which is fear. The attachment style quiz adapts the four adult attachment categories from relationship research to friendship. The toxic friendship quiz and the good-friend quiz turn the standards from what makes a good friend into questions about one specific friendship and about yourself.

What they are not: validated psychometric instruments, clinical screens, or predictions. A result of 'Anxious' on the attachment quiz means your answers matched a pattern, not that you have a condition. A result of 'Deeply Isolated' on the loneliness quiz is a prompt to read the guide and, if it has lasted a long time, to talk to someone qualified — the U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 advisory treats chronic loneliness as a health risk on the order of smoking — not a diagnosis of anything. Every result page says this, and it is worth saying here too, because a quiz that flatters you is useless and a quiz that frightens you is worse.

There is no account and no email capture; the result is computed in your browser, and the share buttons share only the result name, if you choose to press them. The site's general analytics apply as described in the privacy policy.

'What kind of friend am I?' — the friendship style quiz, eight questions, seven archetypes (the Loyalist, the Connector, the Anchor, the Encourager, the Confidant, the Adventurer, the Sage). Each archetype has its own page describing how that style makes friends, where it stalls, and which guides suit it. This is the quiz to start with if you have no specific worry.

'Am I actually a good friend?' — the am I a good friend quiz, ten questions on how you show up, listen, follow through and repair. Four results from The Rock to Time to Recalibrate. The honest one; it is written so that the flattering answers are obvious and the useful information is in whether you chose them.

'What do I need from friends?' — the friendship love language quiz: quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, thoughtful gestures or physical warmth. Useful for explaining why a friend who never texts can still feel close and one who texts daily can feel distant.

'Why do my friendships follow the same pattern?' — the friendship attachment style quiz: Secure, Anxious, Avoidant or Fearful-Avoidant, applied to friendship rather than romance. Often the most illuminating of the eight, because the pattern it names tends to have been running for years.

'Is this specific friendship bad for me?' — the toxic friendship quiz, which assesses one friendship at a time, from Green-Flag through Yellow Flags and Serious Red Flags to This Sounds Toxic. Pair it with the friendship red flags guide.

'Do I come across as closed off?' — the how approachable am I quiz, eight questions on resting expression, eye contact and how you handle the first thirty seconds. Results from Instantly Warm to The Wall, with the specific habits to change for each.

'How much socializing can I actually take?' — the social battery quiz: Low, Rechargeable or High. This one changes which venues will work for you more than any other, and the place and format guides refer back to it.

'Am I lonely, or just alone?' — the how lonely am I quiz, eight questions distinguishing chosen solitude from isolation, with results from Well-Connected to Deeply Isolated and a clear line about when to involve a professional.

Because the friendship style quiz is where most people start, here is what the seven results mean, so you can recognize yourself — or the friend you are about to send it to — before you take it. Each archetype has a full page of its own, linked from the result.

The Loyalist — your friendships are measured in decades, not events. Few, old, and unshakeable; the risk is never making new ones.

The Connector — you introduce people to each other before they know they need to meet. Wide circles, natural host of the group; the risk is being everyone's bridge and nobody's confidant.

The Anchor — you do not seek out friends; they steady themselves on you. Reliable, calm, chosen by others; the risk is a circle built entirely from people who needed something.

The Encourager — you are the friend people text right after a hard meeting. Warm, quick to reassure; the risk is friendships that run on one direction of support.

The Confidant — you do not have many friends, and the ones you have know everything. Depth over breadth; the risk is a circle small enough that one loss empties it.

The Adventurer — you make friends by doing things, not by talking about them. Fast to form friendships around an activity; the risk is friendships that end when the activity does.

The Sage — your friendships feel like long conversations that never quite end. Reflective, slow-burning, intellectually close; the risk is mistaking a good conversation for a maintained friendship.

None of the seven is better. Each one makes friends a particular way, stalls in a particular way, and is served by a particular set of guides — which is the whole reason the quiz exists. If you already know your style, the adult friendships section has the guides sorted by problem rather than by type.

A quiz result is a starting point for one guide, not a verdict to carry around. Each quiz page ends with the guides that fit its results; read one. If the result surprised you, that is usually the most useful kind — the pattern you did not know you had is the one costing you the most. If it confirmed what you suspected, the guide it points to is the one you have probably been avoiding.

Results also combine. A Low Battery result plus an Anxious attachment result describes someone who needs few, deep friendships and worries about losing them — a specific situation with specific advice in how to make friends as an introvert and how to deepen a friendship. A Connector style plus a Time to Recalibrate good-friend result describes someone who makes friends easily and keeps them badly — which is what how to keep up with friends is for. Two quizzes, six minutes, and you know which of the ninety-odd guides on How to Make Friends Hub to read first.

Retake them. Attachment patterns shift with a few good years; social battery changes with life stage; a friendship that scored Yellow Flags in March may score differently in September, in either direction. The quizzes are cheap to repeat and more useful as a before-and-after than as a single reading.

Because the research is hard to apply to yourself. Knowing that friendship takes roughly 50 hours of shared time to become casual and more than 200 to become close, per Hall's 2018 study, does not tell you whether you are the kind of person who accumulates those hours easily or the kind who has to schedule them. Knowing that Boothby and colleagues found in 2018 that people underestimate how much others liked them does not tell you whether you are underestimating by a little or by a lot. A quiz is a way of turning a finding about people in general into an observation about you in particular, and then routing you to the guide written for people with that observation.

They are also, frankly, the thing readers share. Most people who find this site through a friend found it because that friend sent them a quiz result. If one of these tells you something true, send it to the person it made you think of. That is, in a small way, exactly the second ask every guide here is about. The adult friendships, age and stage and life change sections are where the quizzes point; this page is where they live.