A friend is someone you can always rely on. There are a few that are immediately visible. The people who always make you laugh, and the first people to call when you need advice. Either way, the important bond between true friends deserves appreciation. The hustle and bustle of life can get in the way, but now is the perfect time to show them how much you appreciate them. 

Prioritizing friendships has many health and well-being benefits. To date, however, relatively few studies have examined cultural moderators in relation to friendships and significant outcomes. In other words, is prioritizing friendship more beneficial in some situations than in others? We investigated how it relates to the benefits obtained from The sample included 323,200 participants (M=40.79 years, SD=16.09 years) from 99 countries covered by the World Values ​​Survey. A multi-level analysis found that women, highly educated people, and those living in economically equal and generous countries valued friendship more. Prioritizing friendships in life has been associated with better health and well-being, but these associations depended on many cultural factors. Findings are discussed in the context of how friendships can enrich health and well-being in different settings. 

The role of friendship in health and well-being
There is a reliable link between lifelong social support and physical and mental health, and friends are an important source of support. Friends give us a strong sense of camaraderie, reduce loneliness, and contribute to our self-esteem and life satisfaction. Feeling more support from friends can give you a sense of purpose and control over your life. In terms of predicting health status, friendships can be as predictive of health status as, and sometimes even better than, spouse and parenthood. Friends also help individuals introduce healthy behaviors into their lives. For example, seeing a friend trying to lose weight is associated with that person's efforts to maintain a healthy weight. 

There are also some factors at the national level (such as Gross Domestic Product) and individual factors (such as gender) that can explain the differences in how people define and value friendship, and the benefits that people derive from friendship. However, there are few large-scale studies of cross-cultural differences in friendship processes. For this reason, this study adopted a primarily exploratory approach to investigate how country-level factors influence whether people value friendships in their lives. Research has established different aspects of social and cultural structures. One such framework is Hofstede's cultural dimension, which consists of her six national concepts for countries to organize themselves. Although there are many dimensions to cultural differences, we focus primarily on Hofstede's I decided to focus on the sides. However, we perform some complementary analyzes that examine other taxonomies of cultural dimensions.