Lecture 6 - Friendship Flashcards
When are friends important
2 y/o -> 10% time with peers
School -> 30% time with peers
Greater preference for peer interaction (Ellis et al., 1981)
School years
Increasingly concerned about acceptance by the peer group
More unsupervised peer interaction
Big influence
Realise having more preference to peers
Through gossip - how to be accepted
Learn about social norms and expectations -> develops social skills and adaptation to friendships
Social hierarchys
Links with mental health, well-being, school success
Links to feelings of selfworth
Recipricol relationship -> try out new things
Doesnt matter number friendships -> just one strong good friendship needed
But if have low friendship quality with best friend -> feel effects of more reciprocated friendships
Friend versus peer
Friend = mutual liking
Peer = another in the same social group
Friendship research methods
Observation
Peer (sociometric) nominations
Reciprocal nominations
Revised Class Play (Reputation Measure)
Rating Scales
Sociometric ratings = how much do you like them, how much do you like playing with them
Friendship Quality = pick best friend, do they offer help, will they tell you if something wrong etc.
Paired comparisons of nominations/ratings
Social network analyses
Sociometric diagram
3 groups, joined with links
All boys on left, all girls on right, mixed in middle
Sex segregation in class in year 6 groups
Like nominations -> who they like to play with
Indication
Indication of those not liked Anthony, Amanda, Trevor and Cory -> rejected
Green -> great source of influence, could help rejected, more leadership
Orange -> contreversion, high number like and dislike, often exsiting ideas to do, but also causing trouble
Red -> more neglected, just not thought of, not top three linked or disliked of many people at all
Friendship groups - all reciprocated
Start to notice reasons for people rejected- shy, angry and disrupted
Measuring peer relations
Few like and few dislike nominations -> Neglected
Many like and few dislike -> Popular
Few like and many dislike -> Rejected
Many like and many dislike -> Controversual
Soiciometric status
Popular children:
Good social skills
Not typically aggressive
In adolescence, they do begin using more relational aggression.
Pay attention and respond to that, good empathy, good emotion regulation
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Withdrawn-rejected children (10-25% of rejected children)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.
Difficult to maintain relationships due to interpretiting situation as personal attack when not
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
Examples of social-cognitive skills
Cooperation
Negotiation
Mental state awareness
Emotional awareness
Friendship and gossip help to learn and understand this
Less likely to critisise friends but sometimes this is good to tell you possible wrong doings
Defining friendship
Defining Friendship A voluntar y and rec iproca l relat ionship between 2 indi v idua l s
Diatic frienships -> young age just one
Develop to larger group with different people for different things
Early Friendship development
3-7: Intimacy = children’s physical location
Conflicts arise over toys and space
4-9: Friendships are one-way: exist because fulfil some function that the self wants
A close friend is someone they know likes and dislikes of
Later friendship development
6-12:
Able to reflect on joint experiences
Concerned with coordinating and approximating likes and dislikes
Fairweather friendships (Fairweather - arguement happens, everything over and no more friendship, may still like each other, just cant be friends)
9-15 :
Intimate and mutually shared relationships
Mutual understanding and concern –share personal problems
12- adulthood:
Accepts independence and dependence
Can be friends with multiple people -> multiple strong connections, understand that cannot fulfil with just one person, but can still go back to them when needed (12+)
How different ages define a friend
- 11-12 years - understand eachother, self-disclosure, cooperation and recipricol done for
- Preschool - those most similar, in proximity to you
- 9-10 years - start to share values and rules and beliefs of good/ bad, sensitive to others and inequalities, start to take care of eachother
- 6-8 years - common interest, activities they share, proximety, rewards give one and other
Selecting friends
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.
Friendship 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
Friends in early childhood
Reciprocated friendships
Young mixed-sex friendships become more gender segregated
Children begin to recognize that some peers are more dominant than others – reflected in conflict situations
More sympathetic
Less conflict
Engage in more pretend play
Developing social skills
More likely to be with same sex- society expectation? more likely to be similar? more likely to have same interest?
Fighting-> more likely to give in to same sex friend when arguing
Recognise dominant in friendship from early on
Sex cleavage
Sex segregation occurs early on:
Infants prefer to look at same-sex images
2 = boys more likely respond to play with boy than girl
Childhood, >90% peer time spent with same-sex
Adolescence, preference for same-sex interactions declines -> cross-sex friendships do exist (McDougall & Hymel, 2007)
Ethnicity and friendship
Minority children tend to be more accepting of cross-race friendships (Leman & Lamm, 2008)
Cross-ethnicity- all better listening
Friend vs. non-friend interactions
With friends:
Greater cooperation & coordination
More pretend play
More conflict, but also more likely to resolve conflict in controlled ways
Similarity between friends - 11-15 y/o
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
Gender differences
Girls = larger social networks
Girls social networks were more ethnically diverse
Girls had 62% of reciprocated friendships being cross-ethnic, boys had 54%
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, & Chamberlain, 2007)
Emergence of cliques
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.)
In middle childhood
3-9 children in the group (often same sex & race)
Usually stable for only a few weeks
Cliques function as:
Group of peers to socialize with
Validation of features the group has in common
Provide sense of belonging
Adolescence
More than one clique
Greater stability of cliques
Important to conform to group dress & behaviour
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.
Parental role in children’s peer relations
Parent beliefs
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
Definition of 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
Negative actions are:
Physical contact
Words
Making faces or obscene gestures
Intentional exclusion from a group
Multidimensional approach to bullying
Who bullies
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
