Potential Dishonesty

As we discussed before, when compared our interview results to some research results that have been done before, we get obviously a different answer pattern. In previous researches, they find out that men are tend to respond "no" to the question "do you believe that man and woman can just be friends" and women are tend to respond "yes". However, according to our observation, all our interviewees, except for one guy, responded as "yes".

During the interview, I noticed that most people had hesitations when responding to the question during the interviews. They will say things like "uh, this is a tough question", "Mm can you repeat it again", or just laugh when they first heard the question. They usually provided their answers after a second thought, which is "yes" and man and woman can just be friends. Also, when asked why they believe that way, the reason they provided for their answers are almost same, like "because I have a lot female/male friends myself and I don't feel anything between us."

Due to the unusual response pattern and similar reason got from the interviews, we, as interviewers, have explored some flaws in our interviews. We consider hesitation, prestige and dishonesty may play a role for this result. When interviewed in person, respondents worried about this reputation and face, and have the desire to receive respect from others. Answering "yes" seems to be a more "appropriate" answer because it shows that there are no sexual desire or potential romance between his/her cross-sex friendship, which makes him seem like more trustworthy with less agenda in friendships. In our interview, the only interviewee who answered "no" to our question said men and women are meant to be different biologically, and there are always sexual desire between them. Other people will consider the guy who provided this kind of answer less respectful and less trustworthy as a friend. So, as a potential flaw in this interview, respondents may be dishonest because of his prestige and desire to be thought as a good person.

Another potential problem in the interview would be universal generalization, which means that respondents may not consider his/her own answer as "Yes" but he/she thinks that universally speaking, man and woman are possible to be just friends. There are people out there can just have pure friendship with a cross-sex person. But, indeed he/she cannot manage it. That's another potential reason that can be used to explain the response pattern we got from our interview.