Friendship Flashcards
How do you define a friend?
How does freind prefernece change with age?
More time in peer interaction: (Higgins & Parsons, 1983)
At 2, only 10% of time is spent with peers
On entry into school, 30% of time is spent with peers
Greater preference for peer interaction (Ellis et al., 1981) as you get older, preference for adult companion decreases wit hage from 1/2-11/12
During school years children become increasingly concerned about their acceptance by the peer group (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998)
why is friendship important to us psycholgically?
Development of social skills
Links with mental health, well-being, school success
Links to feelings of selfworth (Maunder & Monks, 2018)
What is the differecne between a freind and a peer?
Friend = mutual liking Peer = another in the same social group
give 9 ways to measure friendship
Observation
Peer (sociometric) nominations
Reciprocal nominations
Revised Class Play (Reputation Measure)
Rating Scales
Sociometric ratings (will they help you, will they tell you when you do something wrong etc.)
Friendship Quality
Paired comparisons of nominations/ratings
Social network analyses
What is a sociometric diagram?
A diagram which shows who is friends with who in a group of people, small clusters indicate friendship group, large clusters indicate peer group
how do you measure peer relations
how much someone is liked can be done on a 4x4 table
Number of like nominations: few and many on one side
number of dislike nominations: few and many on another side of the table
outline what has been found in sociometric studies?
Popular children:
Good social skills
Not typically aggressive
In adolescence, they do begin using more relational aggression.
Rejected children:
Aggressive-rejected children (40-50% of rejected children)
Withdrawn-rejected children (10-25% of rejected children)
Interpret benign situations as intentional, and have difficulty coming up with solutions for difficult social situations.
Neglected children:
Less sociable and disruptive than average children
Controversial children:
Have characteristics of both the popular and rejected children
Socially active and often group leaders
give some examples of social-conitive development friendship helps build
Cooperation- taking part in a more complex play need to work together to achieve something
Negotiation
Mental state awareness- start to understand what other people think and believe
Emotional awareness- understand when to talk and when to hold back
Outline how Piaget and Vygotsky’s views on the social-cognitive development and freindship
Relatively equal in perceived power
Piaget
-peers are useful in the construction of one’s own explanations & rules of how things work
Cognitive disagreement would lead peers to be aware of and explore differing perspectives on a problem
Vygotsky
-cooperation in relationships is useful in the construction of one’s skills and abilities
-Zone of proximal development: Adults and peers as tutors (scaffolding)
First intimate relationship
Friendships support social-cognitive development
define friendship
A voluntary and reciprocal relationship between 2 individuals
Outline Early friendship development according to selman 1981
Between 3 and 7:
Intimacy refers to children’s physical location
e.g. Conflicts arise over toys and space
Between 4 and 9:
Friendships are one-way: exist because fulfil some function that the self wants
A close friend is someone they know likes and dislikes of
Outline later friendship defined by selman 1981
Between 6 and 12:
Are able to reflect on joint experiences
Concerned with coordinating and approximating likes and dislikes
Fairweather friendships… (specfic argument with friend but as soon as there is an argument friendship is over.
Between 9 and 15: Can have intimate and mutually shared relationships
Have a mutual understanding and concern –share personal problems
Between 12 and adulthood:
Accepts independence and dependence
outline factors imortant in considering friendships
PROXIMITY: Young children have friends who are close in proximity
Older children accept more distance
SAME AGE
-Early & Middle childhood = same-age friends
SIMILARITY:
Young children like similarity of location or features Older children select similarity on the basis of personality features, common interests & attitudes, etc.
Epstein 1989
Outline friendships in infancy
Infants have peer preferences (Howes & colleagues)
12- to 18-months: more smiling, reaching, touching specific peers
12- to 24-months: 3 times more likely to comfort preferred peers
20 months: selectively initiate interactions (and play) with some peers over others
how does friendship display itself in early childhood?
Reciprocated friendships appear
Young mixed-sex friendships become more gender segregated
Children begin to recognize that some peers are more dominant than others – reflected in conflict situations
what is the sex cleavage?
Sex segregation occurs early on: Infants prefer to look at same-sex images
At 2, boys are more likely to respond when a boys asks them to play than a girl
Childhood, >90% peer time spent with same-sex
Adolescence, preference for same-sex interactions declines
BUT, cross-sex friendships do exist (McDougall & Hymel, 2007) 81% of 9- to 18-year-olds agree
64% of these children judge that the types of friends differ
Outline ethnicity and freindship?
Minority children tend to be more accepting of cross-race friendships (Leman & Lamm, 2008)
80% of African and European Americans had best friend from same ethnic background (Hamm, 2000)
60% of Asian Americans had best friend from same ethnic background (Hamm, 2000)
outline how interactions differe between friends and non-freinds
greater cooperation & coordination
more pretend play
more conflict, but also more likely to resolve conflict in controlled way
Explain similarity between friends
11- to 15-year-olds
Friends behaviour more similar than non-friends
Socially accepted friends more alike on nominations of having friends, being liked, and being a victim
Friends reported more similar depression levels
Gender differences:
Girls: friends more similar in cooperation, offers help and liked most nominations
Boys: friends more similar in shyness and victimization nominations
(Haselager et al., 1998)
outline the findings of Poulin et al. 1997
9 year old group
significant findings found for similarity in starting fights, leadership, direct observation and peer ratings for friends but not non-freinds
E/g/ if you’re friends with someone who starts a fight you’re more likely to do so yourself.
outline similarity in adolescence
Friendships were made on similarity of dimensions that matter, such as
attitudes to school and school achievement
normative behaviour (e.g., drug use, drinking, antisocial behaviour)
What’s normative varies by:
Sex. Difference in similarity of sexual behaviour and attitudes
Ethnicity. Differences in similarity of academic
orientation
(Hartup 1998, and Hamm, 2000)
Could these findings be accounted for by what is important for social reputation?
Do boys and girls friendship groups differ?
Girls had larger social networks
Girls social networks were more ethnically diverse
Girls had 62% of reciprocated friendships being cross-ethnic, boys had 54%
Lee, Howes and Chamberlain, 2007
What is important for group composition?
Sex appears to be more important than ethnicity Cross-sex dyads comprised of 7% of friendships Cross-ethnic dyads comprised of 59% of friendships
Lee, Howes and Chamberlain, 2007
Outline Cliques and crowds in adolescence
In adolescence
Often belong to more than one clique
Greater stability of cliques
Important to conform to group dress & behaviour
In adolescence, crowds become more important than what clique one belongs to:
Crowds are groups of individuals whose reputations fits with stereotypes (e.g., ‘freaks’, ‘geeks’,’ losers’, ‘jocks’) Often does not choose their association with a crowd voluntarily.
Assigned by peer group and may spend little time with the crowd. Important to conform to the clique
What is a clique?
Cliques are friendship groups that children will form or join, but members do not always see themselves as close friends. They have shared similarities (e.g., academic motivation, aggressiveness, bullying, shyness, popularity, cooperativeness, adherence to conventional values, etc.)
Outline cliques in middle childhood
In middle childhood
Usually between 3-9 children in the group (often same sex & race)
Usually stable for only a few weeks (Cairns et al., 1995) In middle childhood, cliques function as:
Group of peers to socialize with
Validation of features the group has in common Provide sense of belonging
Outline the parental role in peer relations in terms of attachment style and parent and child interaction styles
Attachment style
Secure attachment: children display positive emotions and have good social skills (long lasting effects through adolescence)
Insecure attachment: tend to be more aggressive, whiny, and socially withdrawn
Parent-child interaction styles
Interactions differ for popular children and their parents in comparison to unpopular children and their parents.
Outline the parental role in peer relations in terms of parentla belief
Coaching behaviour: Mothers may coach in prosocial behaviour
Modelling behaviour Children demonstrate similar conversational styles as they have experienced at home
Long-term implications for child’s behaviour: after adolescence- feel peers more important but early parental influence is still significant in later behaviours
define bullying
The abuse of physical and psychological power for the purpose of intentionally and repeatedly creating a negative atmosphere of severe anxiety, intimidation, and chronic fear in victims. (Marini, Spear, and Bombay, 1999, p.33)
What is bullying?
Repeated exposure to negative actions from one or more others (Slater & Bremner, 2003)
Negative actions are:
Physical contact
Words
Making faces or obscene gestures
Intentional exclusion from a group
around 10% of children are subject to persistant bullying
outline the multi-dimensional apprach
see picture document
Woh bullies?
Mainly boys…
60% of bullied girls were bullied by boys
15-20% of bullied girls were bullied by both sexes
80% of bullied boys were bullied by boys
BUT, victims of bullying also bully
Outline bully charactersitics
Tend to have:
more positive attitude towards aggressive behaviours than other children
conduct problems
Social problems
Generally are characterized by impulsivity and a strong need to dominate others, and have little empathy for their victims
3 motivations: power and dominance hostility towards the environment to gain reward (Kljakovic & Hunt, 2016; Perry, Perry, & Kennedy, 1992
Outline victim charactersitcs
Victims have been found to have:
Internalising problems: including more anxious and insecure; lower self-esteem, more likely to be depressed
Social problems
Have greater difficulty adjusting to school
But, some also have externalizing problems
Conduct problems
Proactive versus reactive aggression
Outline bulying stability
Kochenderfer & Ladd (1996) found that in kindergarten 20.5% of children were victimized. BUT, only 9% of victims were consistently victimized.
Sourander et al. (2000) examined bullying at age 8 and again at age 16 and found that:
Boys had greater stability in bullying and victimization than did girls.
30% of bullies and 30% of victims had been referred to mental health services
BUT only 18% of bullies and 15% of victims went
Outline how friends can protect in bullying?
Bukowski et al. (1995) found that children who had reciprocated friendships were less likely to be victimized.
Hodges et al. (1999) investigated this further by examining:
internalizing and externalizing behaviours,
reciprocated friendships,
protection, companionship, security, conflict
summarise the findings that friendships increase victimization
Summary of findings for increases in victimization:
Children without a best friend had increases in internalizing and externalizing behaviours
Too much time spent with best friends had increases in internalizing problems when victimized.
Summerise the findings that friendships decrease victimization
having a best friend predicted decreases in victimization
Security, companionship, and conflict did not predict changes in victimization
Protection was related to decreases – but what kind of protection??
how do reactive children help with bullying
Reactive children: aversive & provocative?!
Protective factors against victimization: Prosocial friends?
Siblings?
Age
Why/How might they protect?!
offer new stratgeies
use their skills to facilitate resolution
outline the important points of friendship in development
Similarity is important for all friendships, it is just our idea of what is a similar person that changes
There is great stability in our skills to develop and maintain friendships evidenced from early childhood
Boys and girls interactions with friends are different
Parents can play a role in the development and maintenance of peer relationships
