Week 10: L2: The Nature Of Friendship

Question 0

3 themes of friendship

Answer 0

• affective: share personal thoughts and feelings
• communal: participate in communal activities, similarity, and giving and receiving practical assistance
• sociable: source of amusement, fun and recreation
• defintion: voluntary, personal rship, typically providing intimacy and assistance, in which two parties like one another and seek each others company

Question 1

Attributes of friendship

Answer 1

Someone with whom: 
- we are intimate, can trust
- depend on 
- shares, is accepting, caring 
- we are close, enjoy 
Additional attributes 
- equality
- authenticity 
- respect

Question 2

Types of friendship

Answer 2

• casual (numerous)
• close (typically 4-6)
• best (typ. 1)
  Married men freq refer to wives as ‘best friends’ but not vica versa

Question 3

What are friends for?

Answer 3

Responsiveness
- attentive and supportive recognition of our needs
Capitalization
- good friends enhance out delight when we share good news or events with them
Social support
- emotional, advice, material

Question 4

How friendship differs from love

Answer 4

• Both include positive and warm evaluations, but romantic love includes fascination, sexual desire and exclusivity
• fships have less restrictive social norms and are easier to dissolve
• fships less likely to involve overt expressions of positive emotions and friends generally spend less free time together than romantic partners do

Question 5

Friendship in infancy

Answer 5

1 year
- capable of complementary and reciprocal interactions
2 yrs
- pairs of children sometimes gravitate towards one another
- play is associative, cooperative and enjoyable
Preschool years
- label playmates as friends

Question 6

Friendship in childhood

Answer 6

• grow richer and more complex

- partly due to cog dev -> children are increasingly able to take others perspectives, understand other viewpoints

Question 7

Stages of childhood friendship (Selman, 1981)

Answer 7

Before 10
- fair weather cooperation: friendships self-interest rather than mutual interests
Middle school 10-13 yrs
- intimate-mutual sharing: collaboration that serves everyone’s interests
- exclusive and possessive rship
Teen yrs (13+)
- autonomous independence: no single fship can fulfill all needs
Success in childhood fshipsay pave the way for better adult outcomes

Question 8

Friendship in adolescence and young adulthood

Answer 8

Adolescence
- less time is spent w families and more time with peers
- friends are increasingly turned to increasingly to satisfy important attachment needs
- no of opposite-sex fships increase
- fships may involve arguments, teasing, competition, and peer pressure
Young adulthood
- intimacy vs isolation
- after college = fewer friends, but deeper, more interdependent fships

Question 9

Friendships in mid-life

Answer 9

• Dyadic withdrawal: more time is spent w romantic partner, less with friends
• esp affects fem friendships and opposite-sex fships
• fships w other couples and w other parents may prosper

Question 10

Fships in old age

Answer 10

Elderly have smaller social networks and fewer friends than young people -> esp men. Why?
- social barriers to friendship
- disengagement perspective
- quality vs quantity argument
Elderly who have good friends love longer and have healthier lives that those with fewer social connections

Question 11

Gender diffs in fships

Answer 11

Women: face-2-face 
- emotional sharing and disclosure 
- Women closer and more intimate 
Men: side-by-side 
- shared activities, companionship and fun

Question 12

Close male fships

Answer 12

• men stimes lack friends to turn to for sensitive, sympathetic understanding and support
• men capable of being expressive and close as women, but choose not to be. Why?
  • social role norms
  • when norms make it appropriate, men self-disclose more than w
  • cultural differences

Question 13

Can men and w be close friends?

Answer 13

• common but post-university intimate cross-sex fships can be difficult to maintain. Why?
  • determining whether rship is fship or romantic
  • problems of sexual tension
  • cross-sex fship can be tricky when ppl are married to others

Question 14

Individual difference in fship

Answer 14

High need for intimacy
- high self-disclosure and loyalty 
- behave more kindly towards friends 
- share more and listen more 
Depression 
- can struggle with social interactions 
- engage in a pattern of excessive reassurance seeking 
- cyclical rship: interpersonal rejection -> unfriendliness -> harder to attract friends

Question 15

Shyness

Answer 15

• definition: combines social reticence as inhibition behaviour with nervous discomfort is social settings
• 80% of ppl have exp shyness
• feel: self-conscious, inept, uncomfortable, worried, ineffective
• chronic shyness: fear negative eval from others, poor self-reward, lower social skills
• engage in cyclical behavior: adopt a cautious and withdrawn style interaction that deflects interest and enthusiasm from others

Question 16

Loneliness

Answer 16

• occurs when we want more, or more satisfying, connections with others than we currently have
  • social isolation vs emotional isolation
• some personal characteristics
  •48% is genetic
  • insecure attachment
  • men lonelier than w on average

Question 17

Friendships and gossip

Answer 17

• sharing neg attitudes about others promotes closeness and fship
  • more so than positive information
• establishes in-group vs out-group boundaries
• may be more positive for males than females
  • enhance individual bonding in make fships
  • f more likely to view in-group gossiping as threatening to the fship

Question 18

Enemies

Answer 18

Contrast b/w fship initiation and enemyship initiation
- friends - grow together and occasionally click
- enemies - typically can’t understand how it happened; sudden and mysterious
Enemies
- hold power over target
- make people feel suspicious and anxious; neg about themselves
- have power to damage reputations through gossip and lies, or damage status and financial position