Social support from friends and family in a Tibetan village

Friendships are prevalent in human societies. However, it is unclear whether people rely on the same strategy to derive support from friends and relatives. In the present study, I conducted a survey to elicit the egocentric support networks of 40 village residents in a Tibetan village in Qinghai province in China. The study showed that the participants reported equal amounts of support from friends and from relatives, and they preferred a shallow strategy over a deep strategy to derive support from friends; they equally preferred the two strategies to derive support from relatives. My study suggests that even if friends compensate for the variation of kin support in quantity, friendship should not be considered as one-for-one substitute for kinship.