What Prince's Unique Style Teaches Us About Making Friends
The Friendship Formula
Prince was a defining musical artist of a generation, but his career didn’t start successfully.
Prince blended the sounds of multiple genres in a way that initially confused listeners. And it wasn’t just his unique sound that confused listeners, he also challenged racial and gender norms—as a male black artist playing rock music while wearing high heels and crop tops.
Prince’s music was initially hard for audiences to define. It didn’t fit neatly into existing genre categories. But as his music was played more and more, listeners grew comfortable with its unpredictability.
Over time, repeated exposure turned confusion into recognition.
Recognition turned to admiration, and Prince became a music icon.
What changed? It wasn’t that Prince’s music became simpler, it’s that people became more familiar with it.
As humans, we’re hardwired to find comfort in predictability. In our evolutionary past, unpredictability meant greater odds of danger.
You knew the foods you always ate weren’t harmful. You knew the areas free of predators because you’d traveled them hundreds of times. And you knew a song would be good because it sounded like every other song you liked before it.
The same pattern applies to relationships.
Meeting new people can sometimes feel like hearing a Prince song for the first time—unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
But just like with music, familiarity breeds comfort. Your favorite comfort foods are something you ate often as a child. It's this nostalgia that creates your sense of comfort upon re-experiencing them.
Frequent exposure to new food or music helped it feel predictable, and you started to like it more.
This is called the Mere Exposure Effect: The more frequently you’re exposed to something the more you grow to like it.
Making friends isn’t just about being physically close to others. It requires being repeatedly close to others.
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