13.2 Friendship

Friend: is a peer with whom an individual had an intimate, reciprocated and positive relationship

Children’s Choice of Friends

Determinants of friends  

• Befriend peers who are friendly/act prosocially towards others 

• Similarity of interests and behaviors 

• Similar cognitive maturity of their play – levels of cooperativeness, antisocial behaviors, acceptance by peers, and shyness 

• Academic motivation and self-perceptions of competence 

• Similar levels of negative emotions and similar in their tendencies to attribute hostile intentions to others 

Proximity 

• Become friends with peers who are physically nearby 

• Vary widely by cultures 

• Proximity becomes less important with age, it continues to play a role in individuals’ choice of friends into adolescence in part because of involvement in similar activities at school which promote the development of new friendships 

Age 

• Industrialized countries – major factor in friendships 

• May be due to the fact that in most industrialized societies, children are segregated by age in school 

• No the case in place where children don’t attend school 

Gender 

• Girls tend to befriend girls and boy with boys 

• Cross-gender friendships not uncommon – tend to be less stable over the course of a school year than same-gender 

• Preference for same-gender emerges on preschool and continues through childhood 

• Other-gender – increases over the course of childhood and into early adolescence 

race/ethnic group 

• Tend to befriend peers of their own racial/ethnic group, although varies across groups and contexts 

• Friendships outsides one’s own racial/ethnic group are less likely to be reciprocated 

• When reciprocated, they often do not last long 

• Youth that engage effectively in these friendships are more likely to have successful interpersonal relationships in college and in future work environments 

• The fact that friends tend to be similar on a number of dimensions underscores the difficulty of knowing whether friends actually affect one another’s behavior or whether children simply seek out peers who think, act and feel as they do  

Developmental Changes in Friendship  

• As early as their second year of life 

12-18 months 

• display a preference for some children over others by touching them, smiling, and engaging in positive interactions 

24 months 

• begun to develop skills that allow greater complexity in their social interactions 

3-4 years old 

• can make and maintain friendships with peers, have at least one they call their best friend (more positive than relationships with other friends)

• Preschool – prefer playing with same-gender peers and this preference continues through middle school 

5 years old on

• Communicate more often with one another/cooperate and work together more effectively 

• Fight with each others more often, but they are more likely to negotiate their way out of the conflict 

6-8 years old 

• Define friendship primary on the basis of actual activities with peers and tend to define “best friends” as peers with whom they play all the time and share everything 

9 years old 

• Seem to become more sensitive to the needs of others and to inequalities in the ways some groups of people are treated compared to other groups 

Adolescence

• Friendships become an increasingly important source of intimacy and self-disclosure, as well as a source of honest feedback 

• Also become more exclusive

Selman 

• Suggested that changes in children’s reasoning about friendships are a consequence of age-related qualitative changes in their ability to take others’ perspectives 

• Have limited awareness that others may feel or think about things differently than they do 

• Their thinking about friendships is limited by the degree to which they consider issues beyond their own needs 

• As they begin to understand others’ thoughts and feelings, they realize that friendships involve consideration of both parties’ needs so that the relationship is mutually satisfying

The Role of the Internet and Social Media in Friendships 

How electronic communication facilitates the creation and maintenance of friendships:

1. Greater anonymity: leads children to reduce their social inhibitions

2. Less emphasis on physical appearance

3. More control over interactions 

4. Finding similar peers 

5. 24/7 access 

6. It's fun 

• Concern about the effects that these modes of communication may have on social development – and especially on social relationships 

Rich-get-richer hypothesis: those children who already have good social skills benefit from the internet and related forms of technology when it come to developing friendships 

• Socially competent people may benefit from the internet because they are more likely to interact in appropriate and positive ways when engaged in social networking 

Social-compensation hypothesis: argues that social media may be especially beneficial for lonely, depressed and socially anxious adolescents 

• They can take their time thinking about and revising what they say and reveal in their messages, these adolescents may be more likely to make personal disclosures online than offline, which eventually fosters the formation of new friendships

• Internet and social media have changed how teen interact with one another and can affect their mental health

• Monitoring the Future 

• High internet use is at the very least insufficient for reducing loneliness 

Effects of Friendships on Psychological Functioning and behavior 

• Most important benefit – emotional support and the validation of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and worth, as well as opportunities for the development of important social and cognitive skills 

Support and Validation

• Support of friends can be particularly important during periods of transition

• Have more positive initial attitudes toward school if they begin school with a large number of established friends as classmates, likely because the presence of established friends in the early weeks of school reduces the strangeness of the new environment 

• Also serve as a buffer against unpleasant experiences

• Benefit is especially true if friends provide intimacy, security, and help when needed

• Degree to which friends provide caring and support generally increases from childhood into adolescence 

• Age 16 – especially for girls – report the friends are more important confidants and providers of support then their parents 

The Development of Social and Cognitive Skills 

• Provide a context for the development of social skills and knowledge that children need to form positive relationships with other people

• Those who maintain positive relationships with friends also tend to show more understanding of and empathy with other people’s emotions 

• Can use these skills when helping their friends 

• Openness promotes cognitive skills and enhances performance on both academic and creative tasks 

• Children and adolescents who have academically successful friends improve in their academic performance over time, suggesting that friends support each other’s academic engagement and eagerness to succeed 

• Having close, reciprocated friendships in elementary school has been linked to a variety of positive psychological and behavioral outcomes for children, not only during the school years but also years later in early adulthood 

The Potential Costs of Friendships and Negative Peer Interactions 

Peer socialization hypothesis: argues that adolescents adapt their behaviors based on peer influences 

Peer selection hypothesis: posits that these behavioral similarities exist because adolescents actively choose friends who engage in the same behaviors that they do 

• There can be costs to having friends if those friends engage in or encourage negative behaviors 

Aggression and Disruptiveness

• Children who have peers with behavior problems experience more problematic behaviors themselves over time

• Peer socialization and peer selection may work together to explain why friends tend to have similar levels of aggression and problem behavior 

Alcohol and Substance abuse 

• Adolescents tend to have friends who engage in the same levels of alcohol and substance use as they do 

• Evidence suggests that both peer socialization and peer selection processes may explain this tendency 

• Peer substance use predicts changes in an adolescent’s own substance use over time 

• Nature of adolescent-parent relationship matter

• Adolescents with substance-using close friends are at risk primarily if those adolescents’ are are uninvolved 

• Authoritative parenting – those adolescents are more likely to be protected against peer pressure to use drugs 

• Authoritarian parenting – those adolescents are more susceptible to peers’ drug use and thus to using drugs themselves

Bullying and Victimization 

• Relatively common experience 

• Results from a power imbalance, such as the bullied child perceives the bully as having power over them 

• Girls more likely than boys 

• Rates of bullying peak in middle school and steadily decrease to the end of high school 

• Majority – LGBTQ+ youth, immigrant youth, youth with early puberty, and overweight or obese 

Why do children bully others?

• Engage to seem powerful to their peers and to gain power and status 

• Influenced by a range of individual, home, school, neighborhood, and societal factors 

• Tend to be callous and antisocial, susceptible to peer pressure, higher in social status

• Tend to have harsh and insensitive parents 

Children experiencing bullying 

• Likely to be rejected by peer, feel depressed, and do poorly in school, although some are aggressive as well 

• Hereditary factors associated with aggression appear to predict peer victimization 

• A child who experiences bullying may become withdrawn, and this social isolation may in turn make that child an easier target for further bullying 

Relational aggression: a kind of aggression that involves excluding others from the social group and attempting to do harm to other people’s relationships

• It includes spreading rumors about peers, withholding friendship to inflict harm, and ignoring peers when angry and frustrated or trying to get one’s own way 

• Aimed at damaging child’s peer relationships 

• More common among children and adolescents whose parents to not monitor their activities and who have friends or sibling who engage in problem behaviors 

Gender Differences in the Functions of Friendships   

• Girls more likely than boys to desires closeness and dependency in friendship 

• Feel that their friendships are more intimate and provide more validation, caring, help and guidance 

• Girls also report getting more upset than boys do when friends betray them, are unreliable, or do not provide support and help 

• Girls report more friendship-related conflict and jealousy 

• Despot these differences in peer relationship stress, girls are just as stables as boys 

• Girls more likely to co-ruminate – extensively discuss problems and negative thought and feelings