Interpersonal Behavior Topic 7: Friendship

3 themes of friendship

• Affection: like, trust, care

• Communion: reliable help + support

• Companionship: recreation + fun

Difference between friendship and love

• Friendship is less passionate and exclusive

• Less confining, not as many obligations

Aspects of friendship

• Respect

• Trust

• Capitalization: when people enhance our happiness by being excited when good things happen

• Social support

• Responsiveness

4 forms of support in friendship

• Emotional

• Physical

• Advice

• Material

Benefits of friendship support

Improved physical health

• Lower BP, stress, cholesterol

Invisible support

Support provided without fanfare, often unnoticed

Friendship support by gender

• Men give more advice

• Women give more emotional support

Boasting in reflected glory

Sharing in the success of others of others you’re somewhat associated with

Friendship in childhood

Kids play cooperatively and take pleasure in company

• Also called a rudimentary relationship

• As children develop, they have deeper relationships because they can gain perspective

Stages of play

• Kids play near each other

• Kids slightly interact with each other

• Kids openly play with each other

Different needs across childhood and adolescence

• Elementary: acceptance

• Middle school: intimacy

• High school: sexuality

Friendship in adolescence

• Teens spend less time with family, and more time with peers

• Friends are used for attachment needs

Friendship in young adulthood

• intimacy vs isolation

Friendship in midlife

• Pattern of dyadic withdrawal as people settle into romantic relationships

• See more of a lover, less of friends

Friendship in old age

• Smaller social networks

• Less casual friends, same amount of close friends

• Socioemotional selectivity theory: people are focused on present, not future, so people seek quality opposed to quantity in social relationships

Shared friends and marital problems

Couples report fewest conflicts with the more friends they share

Gender differences in same-sex friendships

• Men: shared activities, companionship, fun

• Women: emotional sharing, self-disclosure

When are cross-sex friends preferred?

In men, perceived as:

• closer, caring, and with narcissistic benefit

In women, perceived as:

• Trusting, caring, and with narcissistic benefit

4 challenges of cross-sex friendship

• Determining emotional bond

• Barriers of inequality

• Challenge of relationship presentation

• Issue of sexuality

Evolution and cross-sex friendships

• Sexual strategy

• Different motivations (if motivations are the same, sexual relationship is more likely to work)

Misperception of interest in cross-sex friendships

• Men overestimate women’s interest in them

• Women underestimate men’s interest in them

Men and cross-sex friendships

• Men are more interested in casual sex

• Men are more likely to befriend women they find attractive

How many people have been in a friends-with-benefits relationship?

• 49-62%

• Most common outcome is to stay friends after

Fake romantic partners

• 73.1% report some use of a fake partner

  • Women use them to avoid others

  • Men use them to show that women like them

Sexual orientations and friendship

• Most straight people don’t think they have gay friends, but most LGBTQ people report having straight friends

• Heterosexuals tend to have a less diverse social ggroup

Difficulties in friendships

• Shyness

• Loneliness

Dimensions of loneliness

• Social isolation: lack of network

• Emotional isolation: lack of an intense emotional relationship

• Themes:

  • Isolation

  • Lack of close connectedness

  • Too little social connection

Factors in loneliness

• Genetic influences

• Personality: introversion, lack of agreeableness/conscientiousness, neuroticism

• Insecure attachment

• Low self-esteem