Jealousy can work as a friendship’s alarm system, prompting us to protect a friend when someone new threatens to take our place.
Krems, Williams, Kenrick & Aktipis, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2021
Psychology researcher and faculty at Hamilton College
Friendship is serious work.
Dr. Keelah Williams studies what friendships are for, how we protect them, and the role of friendships in the workplace. She helps organizations put that science to work.
Trained in two fields
PhD in Psychology and JD, Arizona State University
At Hamilton College
Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of Jurisprudence, Law & Justice Studies
Her research sits where evolutionary psychology meets modern day: why we choose the friends we do, what we’ll do to keep them, and how we can promote friendship in the workplace.
Hamilton’s hilltop campus in autumn Keelah teaches Psychology of Friendship and conducts research with world-class collaborators.
What the research shows
All research and publicationsVenting to a friend draws them closer to you, and away from the person you’re venting about.
Krems, Merrie, Rodriguez & Williams, Evolution and Human Behavior, 2024
In China, the UK, Australia and the US, women prioritized emotional support from friends more than men did.
Williams, Li, Chung & Ayers, Evolution and Human Behavior, 2026
Men and women seek some distinct qualities in their friends.
Williams, Krems, Ayers & Rankin, Evolution and Human Behavior, 2022
Consulting
Friendship at work isn’t a perk. It’s how work gets done.
Friendships in the workplace enhance job performance, productivity, creativity, and team cohesion. Keelah helps leaders design the conditions that let those relationships form: proximity, similarity, and time.
200+ hours of shared time it takes to turn an acquaintance into a close friend (Hall, 2018). Workplaces can make that time easy, or nearly impossible.
Explore consulting In the conversation
NPR · Here & Now
On friendship, with longtime collaborator and friend Jaimie Krems
- Hamilton College · December 2025 Four tips for making friends, from Professor Keelah Williams
- KJZZ · The Show · September 2020 ASU study finds jealousy strengthens friendships
- ASU News · August 2020 Jealous feelings can act as a tool to strengthen friendships
- Neuroscience News · 2020 Jealous feelings can act as a tool to strengthen friendships
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