Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 91 p. : ill. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-50).

The purpose of this research was to examine the friendships of emerging adults as influenced by familial environments in order to illuminate interpersonal aspects of well-being. Recent literature affirms that friendships play a critical role in the lives of emerging adults; these interpersonal connections rely on the use of friendship formation strategies and maintenance behaviors. Employing a longitudinal design that included both participant and peer reports, this study found that individuals’ use of friendship formation strategies and maintenance behaviors contribute to their overall well-being and that the path for maintenance behaviors was partially mediated by relational quality with friends. Further, it was expected that the propensity to engage in friendship work (i.e., formation strategies and maintenance behaviors) would be predicted by communication within the parent-child relationship. Recent scholarship asserts that parent confirmation affects both the socialization and psychosocial development of children. The current work employed a confirmation perspective to assess how families lay the groundwork for emerging adults’ communicative behaviors in friendship and found that parent confirmation predicted individuals’ use of friendship formation and maintenance behaviors. Together, these associations pave a social-cognitive pathway from family and friendship to well-being. / text

Background. Previous literature had examined how the adoption of cooperative, competitive and individualistic goal structures in academic tasks influence students’ altruistic behaviors. However, little research has investigated the relationship between goal structures in non-academic activities and children’s affective outcomes. Moreover, the specific differentiation of friends from ordinary acquaintances was seldom considered. Aims. This study compares the immediate effect of different goal structures in a non-academic task on children’s mutual liking. Sample. The participants were 116 fourth and fifth grade students in Hong Kong. Methods. Participants were paired to form friend and non-friend dyads and the dyads were randomly assigned into one of three experimental conditions: cooperative, competitive and individualistic. In all the three conditions, dyads were asked to do a photo-hunt task twice, but the content of instructions and the basis of reward were different. Results. In the cooperative condition, participants’ liking towards their partners had significantly increased, and the average rating was significantly higher than that in the competitive condition. Specifically, the increase in liking between non-friend dyads was greater than that in friend dyads. In competitive condition, the liking between friend dyads had significantly decreased, but the change in liking between non-friend dyads was not significant. No meaningful change was observed in the individualist condition. Conclusion. The findings suggested that children’s liking towards their peers would increase when they were given chance to cooperate with each other; and the liking might decline when they participated in activities that required competition. Implications for activity-planning and group composition are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

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In recent years, a small but growing number of psychologists have begun to examine how the quality and stability of people's romantic relationships can be influenced by people outside of those relationships. Couples' friendships with those in their social networks appear to be particularly relevant determinants of what makes for a happy and lasting relationship. However, previous studies only have indirectly addressed underlying psychological mechanisms that may explain why friendships are beneficial for couples or how such friendships arise in the first place. This dissertation examines how friendships between couples form and potential implications for within-couple processes (e.g., the effects of friendships between couples on relationship quality within a couple). Pairs of unacquainted heterosexual couples in committed dating relationships were randomly assigned to one of two conditions where they engaged in a 45-minute interaction. In one condition, couples carried out self-disclosure tasks that gradually escalated in intensity; in the other condition, couples engaged in non-emotional small talk discussions. The procedure used was a modified version of the closeness induction task developed by Aron and colleagues (Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone, & Bator, 1997) to generate interpersonal closeness between individual strangers--in this case modified to generate closeness between couples. One day later and one month later, participants were asked to complete brief online follow-up measures to assess long-term effects of the experimental manipulation on perceptions of the other couple, feelings of closeness toward romantic partners, and whether or not they had contacted the other couple. Those in the high-disclosure condition felt closer to the couples they interacted with and closer to their own partners after the interaction compared to those in the small talk condition. Further, couples in the high-disclosure condition were significantly more likely than those in the small talk condition to contact and meet up with the other couple they had met in the study. Mediation analyses suggested several possible processes underlying these effects. Implications for studying the interplay of social networks and romantic relationships are discussed.

The processes and patterns of collaborative strategies used by children when drawing on the computer with friends and acquaintances were investigated in a case study. The participants were five-and-six-year-old children and the study took place in their home settings. The data collection methods consisted of interviews, observations, audio recordings, video recordings, drawing artifacts, and screen capture. The analysis began with the selection of collaborative episodes, followed by the application of two theoretical frameworks, those of two play theorists Garvey (1990) and Vygotsky (1978) as analytical lenses through which to interpret those episodes. The young children in this study used four levels of collaborative strategies, listed from the simplest to the most complex: 1) division of labor, 2) pretend language use, 3) coherence and elaboration of pretend frames, 4) action games. The findings revealed a striking contrast between the collaboration of friendship pairs and acquaintance pairs. The friendship pairs exhibited a total number of 32 episodes while the acquaintance pairs engaged in only three episodes. The acquaintance pairs applied only the strategy of pretend language use while the friendship pairs used three other more collaborative strategies and their use of collaborative strategies showed unique paths of progression. Furthermore, the acquaintance pairs exhibited mostly uncooperative and uncollaborative behaviors, which were manifested in three major forms: 1) unengaged behavior, 2) over-reliance on the researcher’s technical support, and 3) disagreement and critique. Informed by these findings, five major points are discussed: 1) Friendship matters; 2) Young children have the ability to collaborate; 3) Pretend play serves as a starting point for collaboration; 4) Collaborative strategies progress as the collaboration proceeds; and 5) Computers can play a supportive role in collaboration for young children. / text

Amicitia – Roman friendship – is delineated as an ideal reciprocal relationship between elite Roman males of fairly equal social standing. When individuals of unequal rank share this ideal reciprocal relationship, amicitia is labeled as “patronage” or “clientship”. This report seeks to test these ideals by examining the language of amicitia between individuals of equal and unequal rank in the plays of Terence. The results of this study show that Terence’s plays broaden the definition of amicitia to encompass a wide range of various friendships, including clientships. The language of amicitia supports the evidence available from late Republican and Imperial Rome that the measurement of reciprocity is indeterminate, amicitia and clientship share the same terminology of friendship, and that it can illuminate character development throughout the plays of Terence. / text

This thesis is an ethnographic study of the informal realm in a North London comprehensive school. Although situated within, and formed by, an institutional context, this network of peer relations is largely unmanaged by adults. Pupils are in charge. They exert influence, manifest social definitions, create their own hierarchies and negotiate their differences. My focus of study is a cohort of 15 to 16 year-olds in Year 11. They come from a diversity of backgrounds, in terms of religion, parental occupation, academic attainments and ethnicity. Through close attention to the pupils’ words and actions in the day-to-day workings of the informal realm in this school, I explore the constitution and consequences of this impressive phenomenon. Anthropological studies of the informal realm are few and far between, and ones in British schools even rarer. Yet, the informal realm offers valuable contributions to three areas in anthropology: the emerging anthropology of youth; the little-studied everyday realities of Western personhood; and an application of Munn’s theory of value production (1986). Munn’s model has not yet been applied to the informal realm. However I argue her theory of value production serves to illuminate the entire realm. It is intrinsically relational and involves subjective transformation. Centrally, action is the primary unit of analysis, as it is for my analysis. There are no structures or formal roles in the informal realm, so pupils must continuously maintain their arena with a constant flow of transactions. I argue that in the process of creating and maintaining this realm, pupils come to value themselves as particular kinds of people (Evans 2006). Different groups engage in different modes of value production. Through these actions, their subsequent evaluations, and the daily debate over what constitutes positive and negative value, pupils collaboratively establish a constellation of differences. They organise their world, enabling them to share the same social space yet define themselves as very different kinds of people. In this constellation of differences, ethnicity, gender and sexuality are particularly salient categories of distinction, subject to pupils’ collaboratively set conventions. In order to ‘fit in’ pupils have to conform to these conventions. Thus this ethnography delineates what is involved in becoming an appropriately ethnic, sexual and gendered person in school. The application of an intrinsically relational model of subjective formation challenging Western ideals of the autonomous individual. These processes of differentiation occur at the same time as processes of unification. Throughout their time as a community, Year 11 pupils are producing communal value through which they can define themselves worthwhile as a group. They end their time of compulsory schooling with a celebration of this communal value.

The following dissertation considers social relationships along New Spain's northern frontier during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With a specific emphasis on the Pimería Alta, an arid and inhospitable region located along the northern periphery of modern day Sonora, I address the broad intellectual and social category of friendship as it was understood, performed, and manipulated by residents of this far-flung province. In this multi-ethnic realm, friendship functioned as an effective medium through which missionaries, settlers, soldiers, and Indians could navigate social space. Mobility for both Europeans and natives was of prime importance for a host or reasons. Friendship, or at least its performance, made this freedom of mobility possible. In this difficult terrain, friendship was conceived at both the macro (group) and micro (individual) levels. It also became a conceptual space through which Spaniards attempted to colonize the frontier by establishing self-serving standards and ideals of amity. These idealized conceptions of fellowship, however, met up against the practical realities of survival and negotiation on the frontier. Over time, friendship took on a more practical and somewhat engineered functionality, yet never fully divorcing itself from its idealized counterpart. Pima Indians became extremely efficient at both adopting these European standards of friendship while at the same time manipulating them in an effort to counter the negative effects of colonialism. For them, friendship, while at times authentic, could also be a hidden and thus extremely useful from of resistance; a false friend could be a very dangerous enemy. To such nefarious ends, friendship was often feigned and performed in an effort to gain access to goods, respect, and social and physical mobility. This dissertation looks at the ways in which Spaniards and Indians utilized friendship to their respective ends, while attempting to ascertain the codes of behavior and rituals associated with it.

This qualitative study utilized the action-project theory and method to investigate the close, long-term friendships (two to ten years in duration) of female, early adolescent dyads. Ten early adolescent girls between the ages of 11 and 13 were studied. The purpose of this study was twofold; first, to determine the characteristics of best friendship projects and how they manifested within early adolescent friendship conversations and; second, to investigate the nature of self-representations (descriptions of the self) made by the participants. The processes (cognitive, affective, and behavioural) and meaning (goals) of friendship jointly expressed within the conversations were identified. As well, self-representations were analyzed from the perspective of whether they functioned to advance friendship projects. In addition to the friendship conversations, collages explicating the girls’ meanings and processes around their close friendships were also explored through an individual interview with each participant. The participants engaged in five friendship projects within their friendship conversations. First, an overriding project to preserve and maintain the friendship was demonstrated. Other sub-projects demonstrated within the conversations were the desire to have fun, to provide support to each other, and to connect with each other. Simultaneously, while jointly enacting other friendship projects, the participants also demonstrated through action, the project of exploring and discovering aspects of their identities. Multiple functional steps (the means) to achieve these projects were utilized. Gossip, fictional and factual storytelling, teasing, joking, problem solving, asking for advice, and displaying physical affection are examples of these means. Self-representations from the conversations were not always consistent with those revealed during self-confrontation interviews, at times in the service of achieving friendship goals. Self-representations between the collage interviews and the friendship conversations were very consistent, suggesting the complementary nature of the data sources. Meanings and processes gleaned from the friendship conversations were also very consistent with those found within the friendship collages. Implications of these findings for parents, educators, and counsellors are discussed.