THE SIMPSON MURDER CASE : Facing Supreme Test as a Friend : Relationships: Closeness of Simpson-Cowlings bonding is regarded as unusual in men. Male friendships often involve a fierce sense of loyalty, researchers say.

At some point on Friday, June 17, O.J. Simpson and his good friend, Al Cowlings, arrived at a decision.

Left alone in a downstairs room of the sprawling San Fernando Valley home of friend Robert Kardashian, with Simpson’s attorney, Robert L. Shapiro, and several other people conferring in a conference room upstairs, the pair fled. Equipped with a cellular phone and a gun, they slipped away in a white Ford Bronco, beginning what would be one of the most dramatic police chases and surrenders in history.

Simpson may have had an understandable reason for running: guilty or innocent, he faced two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, leaving him vulnerable to a death sentence if convicted.

But Cowlings?

What prompted this ex-football player to risk his reputation, his freedom, even his life, to stick with his friend?

Cowlings, 47, will not say. He has been charged with suspicion of aiding and abetting a fugitive and is free on $250,000 bond. But his attorney, Donald M. Re, said:

“A.C. is one of the most loyal, trusting friends anyone could have. I am absolutely convinced his only effort was to make sure that O.J. surrendered alive. I’m very hopeful that the district attorney will take that into account, and will see fit not to bring charges against him.”

The details of what transpired between the two men over the course of that exhausting day may never be known. But, according to behavioral experts, though Cowlings’ actions were extraordinary, male friendships often involve a fierce sense of loyalty and facile willingness to do battle together.

Researchers in the relatively new field of the psychology of male friendships are finding that males differ distinctly from females in ways that often become obvious in times of emotional stress. Among their findings:

* Close male friendships usually arise in childhood and adolescence. But by adulthood, many men do not have the kind of buddy who will lay down his life for his friend, as some believe Cowlings did.

* Men’s friendships are characterized by the reluctance--or inability--to talk about their emotions in an intimate way. Likewise, many men dislike discussing even factual aspects of their relationships with women.

* A friend is often a more effective counselor in a crisis situation than a relative or professional counselor.

* Unlike relatives, most friends consciously weigh the pros and cons of getting involved in a buddy’s problems. But women, more so than men, may take greater stock of a situation before becoming embroiled.

The friendship between Simpson and Cowlings is intriguing, experts said, because of the risk they assumed together. It’s a “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” story for the ‘90s, said Los Angeles psychologist Drury Sherrod.

“For good or for ill, they represent the (image) of men who lay down their lives for their buddies,” said Sherrod, who has studied male friendship. “But it is surprising that they even had this relationship. It’s pretty rare for that sort of friendship to exist among adult males. Most adult males don’t have close friends they can call on.”

According to Sherrod, studies show that close male friendships usually form in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, often revolving around “male bonding” activities, such as sports or military duty.

But in adulthood, those tight friendships tend to relax as the activities that initially brought them together, such as sports endeavors or military enlistment, decline. In surveys, most men list their wife as their best friend, he says. (Women tend to name another woman.)

Although it is not known what motivated Cowlings to stand by Simpson last week, it is clear from interviews with friends that the two were especially close, boyhood friends who played college and professional football together.

In perhaps the most telling sign of their bond, Simpson thanked Cowlings in a letter penned before the flight incident: “Man, thanks for being in my life.”

“I think what distinguishes (them) is they have maintained their friendship when most men don’t,” Sherrod said. “In some ways, it’s the classic adolescent male friendship extended into later life.”

It’s not surprising, given this relationship, that Simpson would turn to Cowlings, he said.

“Typically, men won’t go to anybody (when in despair),” Sherrod said. “What is rare is that Simpson could draw on Cowlings. They grew up together, boyhood friends who saw each other through everything. In his stress, it seems reasonable to me that is who (Simpson) turned to.”

It is traditional in male friendships to place great importance on loyalty, said Harvard psychologist Ron Levant, a leader in the studies of male psychology.

“I think this comes from traditional masculinity that was forged in a harder time, when men had to do battle with each other,” he said. “The idea of absolute loyalty was very important. If you are in combat with somebody, you could count on that person absolutely.”

The advantage of this type of friendship is that it can be lifesaving, said educational psychologist Paul R. Welter, who has studied the importance of friendship. His research indicates that a friend--rather than a relative, attorney or counselor--may be the best person to have around when the going gets tough.

“To help someone, there has to be a relationship and some objectivity,” said Welter who was formerly at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. “Family members have a long history with the person and are too close to help. They are not objective enough.”

Therapists may be objective but usually do not have a long-established and trusted relationship with their client.

“A friend supplies the two things (objectivity and closeness) that a family member or counselor can’t,” he said.

Friends have been shown to be highly effective in counseling seriously depressed or suicidal people, said Welter, author of the book “How to Help a Friend.”

“Just based on what I read, I think there is a good chance that O.J. Simpson’s life was saved because of a caring friend,” he said. “Everything pointed to the fact that things were getting worse with Simpson. What keeps a person from coming completely apart is one friend staying with them. Someone who says: ‘I will stay with you, and I’m not going to abandon you.’ The presence of a caring friend keeps a person from pulling a trigger.”

But the weakness of close male friendships is the inability to talk intimately to each other, particularly when under stress, says Levant.

Recent research in male psychology suggests that men dealing with a heavy emotional burden tend to act rather than talk.

In his theory of “male-role socialization,” Levant describes men’s inability to deal with emotions. Under this explanation, men lack “emotional intelligence,” Levant said.

“That includes two things: The inability to put oneself in another person’s shoes and sense what they are feeling, and the lack of emotional self-awareness.”

Although women are highly adept at discussing their emotions, men often suffer from what Levant calls “alexithymia,” which means “without words for emotions.”

“Women are more emotionally empathetic than men,” he said. “If you ask a woman how she feels, she will describe layer after layer of emotions. Men will say what they did, not what they feel,” Levant said.

This characteristic is because of “the male-gender role, in which men are required to develop an element of stoicism and to deny to themselves either vulnerable emotions, such as shame, fear or hurt, or caring emotions, such as closeness, tenderness and affection. These are drummed out of males in the course of boyhood socialization,” said Levant, who describes his theory in the upcoming book “Masculinity Reconstructed.”

One can surmise that in the Simpson case, “you have a desperate man and another man who wants to be loyal,” he said. “They can’t do what they really need to do, which is talk about the emotional aspects of the situation. And so they act. That is part of the male code--to be action-oriented.”

Being able to release emotions by talking about them--as women often do--usually results in making better decisions, Levant said.

“If men are able to talk about emotions to a friend who would listen with understanding, they might come to some emotional resolution,” he said. “They won’t feel so panicky and the emotion won’t drive them. The emotional boil will have been lanced. Most people can then choose a more reasonable course of action.”

It is easy to view Cowlings with sympathy, Welter said, because he was probably faced with a rare predicament that is known in psychology as a “tragic moral choice.”

Instead of having the choice between right and wrong, or two rights, Cowlings--presumably--was faced with two wrongs.

“It is wrong to aid and abet a fugitive. It is also wrong to let a person die,” Welter said. “The moral person will choose the lesser of two evils. If there is a higher regard for the sanctity of life than the other, they will choose not letting the person die.”

Facing such a crushing choice is rare in most lives, he said.

“We are faced with little tragic moral choices. For example, people might ask: ‘Should I lie or say: That is a terrible tie’? But the big choices, like what Al Cowlings faced . . . there aren’t too many of those.”

Moreover, friends usually have a choice about whether to get embroiled in someone else’s woes. While family members are often forced into making hard choices on the behalf of loved ones, friends are more likely to feel an option to get involved or back off, he says. In this regard, a friend who gets involved seems particularly heroic.

“Friends weigh the consequences,” Welter said. “Friends say: ‘My presence is needed in the situation. There may be negative consequences, but I can’t in good conscience not do this.’

“The question to me is not whether (Cowlings) did the right thing or the wrong thing. But did he do the thing he thought O.J. Simpson needed in order to stay alive?” Welter said. “One has to respect somebody who makes every effort to stay with a friend for whom everything is going worse and worse and worse.”

More so than with women, male friends may choose to come to each other’s aid without fully knowing the circumstances. Women typically want all the details before getting involved.

Research on human behavior suggests that the pair’s decision to flee may have been grounded in that very simplistic bond of friendship--not Cowlings’ intimate knowledge of the facts, Sherrod said.

“It’s so speculative because nothing is known about what they said. But I don’t think you can assume this was a counseling-type relationship. It was somebody to call on to help him,” he said.

Studies also show that men are loathe to confide in each other about personal situations, such as relationship problems.

“Women talk about relationships and problems. Women reveal their vulnerabilities to each other. Men don’t,” Sherrod said. “Males don’t like dealing with conflicts in a relationship. If there were some conflicts, it would be typical for men to avoid them. That would make it easier for Cowlings to say: ‘I don’t care what he did, I’m going to help him out.’ ”

Men develop intimacy by acting together against some obstacle. In this way, Cowlings’ actions might be construed as a true test of his friendship with Simpson.

“Men may have a more unquestioning style of friendship than women,” Sherrod said. “When men are friends, in some ways, it’s a less complicated friendship. There is a saying that women’s friendships are face to face and men’s are side by side.”

And the true test of male friendship is being side by side, against the odds.

“It’s a test of ability,” Sherrod said. “It’s two guys with unquestionable allegiance, facing a risk together. It’s a mythologized male friendship; the kind of friendship where it’s you and your friend against the world.”