Intimate

Relationships

Rowland S.Miller

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C H A P T E R 7

Friendship

The Nature of Friendship ◆ Friendship across the Life Cycle ◆ Differences in Friendship

◆ Friendship Difficulties ◆ For Your Consideration

◆ Chapter Summary

I get by with a little help from my friends. John Lennon

Take a moment and think about your two best friends. Why are they such close companions? Why do you think of them as friends? You probably like but don’t love them. (Or, at least, you’re not “in love” with them, or you’d probably think of them as more than just “friends.”) You’ve probably shared a lot of good times with them, and you feel comfortable around them; you know that they like you, too, and you feel that you can count on them to help you when you need it.

Indeed, the positive sentiments you feel toward your friends may actually be rather varied and complex. They annoy you sometimes, but you’re fond of them, and because they’re best friends, they know things about you that no one else may know. You like to do things with them, and you expect your relation- ship to continue indefinitely. In fact, if you look back at the features that define intimacy (way back on page 2), you may find that your connections to your best friends are quite intimate, indeed. You may have substantial knowledge of them, and you probably feel high levels of trust and commitment toward them; you may not experience as much caring, interdependence, responsive- ness, and mutuality as you do with a romantic partner, but all three are present, nonetheless.

So, are friendships the same as but just less intimate than our romantic partnerships? Yes and no. Friendships are based on the same building blocks of intimacy as romances are, but the mix of components is usually different. Romances also have some ingredients that friendships typically lack, so their recipes do differ. But many of the elements of friendships and romances are quite similar, and this chapter will set the stage for our consideration of love (in chapter 8) by detailing what it means to like an intimate partner. Among other topics, I’ll describe various features of friendship and question whether men and women can be “just friends.”

7.1 THE NATURE OF FRIENDSHIP

Our friendships are indispensable sources of pleasure and support. One study of unmarried young adults found that over one-third of them (36 percent) considered a friendship to be their “closest, deepest, most involved, and most intimate” current relationship (Berscheid et al., 1989). A larger proportion (47 percent) identified a romantic relationship as their most important partnerships, but friendships were obviously significant connections to others. And they remain so, even after people marry. Another study that used an event- sampling procedure1 to track people’s interactions found that they were generally having more fun when they were with friends than when they were alone or with family members, including their spouses. The best times occurred when both their spouses and their friends were present, but if it was one or the other, people derived more enjoyment and excitement from the presence of a friend than from the presence of a spouse (Larson & Bradney, 1988). Why? What’s so great about friendship?

1 If a reminder about event-sampling will be helpful, look back at page 57. (Chapter 2 continues to be useful, doesn’t it?) In this study, participants wore pagers that prompted them to record what they were doing and who they were with every 2 hours during the day.

Attributes of Friendships

A variety of attributes come to mind when people think about a good friend- ship (Fuhrman et al., 2009; Hall, 2012). First, close friends feel affection for one another. They like, trust, and respect each other, and they value loyalty and authenticity, with both of them feeling free to be themselves without pretense. Second, a good friendship involves communion. The partners give and receive meaningful self-disclosures, emotional support, and practical assistance, and they observe a norm of equality, with both partners’ preferences being valued. Finally, friends offer companionship. They share interests and activities, and con- sider each other to be sources of recreation and fun. At its best, friendship is clearly a close, rewarding relationship, which led Beverly Fehr (1996, p. 7) to define friendship as “a voluntary, personal relationship, typically providing intimacy and assistance, in which the two parties like one another and seek each other’s company.”

Differences between Friendship and Love

How, then, is friendship different from romantic attraction? As we’ll see in chapter 8, love involves more complex feelings than liking does. Both liking and loving involve positive and warm evaluations of one’s partner, but romantic love includes fascination with one’s partner, sexual desire, and a greater desire for exclusivity than friendship does (Balzarini et al., 2014). Love relationships also involve more stringent standards of conduct; we’re supposed to be more loyal to, and even more willing to help, our lovers than our friends (Fuhrman et al., 2009). The social norms that regulate friendship are less confining than those that govern romantic relationships, and friendships are easier to dissolve (Fehr, 1996). In addition, friendships are less likely to involve overt expressions of positive emotion, and friends, as a general rule, spend less of their free time together than romantic partners do.

These differences are not just due to the fact that so many of our friendships involve partners of the same sex. Friendships with members of the other sex are also less passionate and less committed than romances usually are (Fuhrman et al., 2009). So, friendships ordinarily entail fewer obligations and are less emotionally intense and less exclusive than romantic relationships. And unlike romantic relationships, friendships typically do not involve sexual intimacy (although some do; we’ll consider “friends with benefits” later).

So, they are less passionate than romances, but rich friendships still con- tain all the other components that characterize rewarding intimacy with both friends and lovers. Let’s consider several of those next.

Respect

When people respect others, they admire them and hold them in high esteem. The specific traits that seem to make a relationship partner worthy of respect include commendable moral qualities, consideration for others, accep- tance of others, honesty, and willingness to listen to others (Frei & Shaver, 2002). We generally like those whom we respect, and the more we respect a friend or lover, the more satisfying our relationship with that person tends to be (Hendrick et al., 2010).

Trust

We trust our partners when we are confident that they will behave benevo- lently toward us, selflessly taking our best interests into account (Rempel et al., 2001). Such confidence takes time to cultivate, but it is likely to develop when someone is alert to our wishes and reliably behaves unselfishly toward us (Simpson, 2007). Trust is invaluable in any close relationship because it makes interdependency more palatable; it allows people to be comfortable and relaxed in their friendships, and those who do not fully trust their partners tend to be guarded and cautious and less content (Rempel et al.). And the loss of trust has corrosive effects on any close relationship (Miller & Rempel, 2004); those who have been betrayed by a partner often find trust, and their satisfac- tion with their relationship, hard to recover (see chapter 10).

Capitalization

Good friends also tend to enhance, rather than diminish, our delight when we share good news or events with them. We don’t always receive enthusias- tic congratulations from others when we encounter good fortune; on occasion, we get bland best wishes, and sometimes others are simply uninterested. But good friends are usually pleased by our successes, and their excitement can increase our enjoyment of the event (Gable & Reis, 2010). So, in a pattern of interaction known as capitalization, we usually share good news with friends and receive enthusiastic, rewarding responses that increase our pleasure

(Lambert et al., 2013b) and enhance our relationships: We feel closer to those who excitedly enhance our happiness than to those who respond to our good fortune with apathy or indifference (Reis et al., 2010), and relationships in which capitalization routinely occurs are more satisfying and longer lasting than those in which it is infrequent (Logan & Cobb, 2013).

Social Support

Enthusiastic celebration of our good fortune is one way in which our inti- mate partners uplift us and provide us aid, or social support (Gable et al., 2012). We also rely on friends to help us through our difficulties, and there are four ways in which they can provide us help and encouragement (Barry et al., 2009). We rely on our partners for emotional support in the form of affection, accep- tance, and reassurance; physical comfort in the form of hugs and cuddling; advice support in the form of information and guidance; and material support, or tan- gible assistance in the form of money or goods. A partner who tries to reassure you when you’re nervous about an upcoming exam is providing emotional support whereas a friend who loans you her car is providing material support. Don’t take these distinctions too seriously, however, because these types of aid can and do overlap; because her generous concern would be touching, a friend who offers a loan of her car as soon as she learns that yours is in the shop could be said to be providing emotional as well as material support.

Social support can be of enormous value, and higher amounts of all four types of support are associated with higher relationship satisfaction and greater personal well-being as time goes by (Barry et al., 2009). Indeed, warm, attentive support from one’s partners matters more than money when it comes to being happy; your income is likely to have less effect on your happiness than your level of social support does (North et al., 2008). But there are several complexi- ties involved in the manner in which social support operates in close relation- ships. Consider these points:

• Emotional support has real physiological effects. People who have affectionate partners have chronically lower blood pressures, cholesterol levels, and stress hormone levels than do those who receive lesser amounts of encour- agement and caring from others (Seeman et al., 2002), and they recover faster from stress, too (Meuwly et al., 2012). In lab procedures, they even experience less pain when they submerge their arms in ice-cold water (Brown et al., 2003). And when people are under stress, just thinking about a supportive friend tends to reduce their heart rates and blood pressures (Smith et al., 2004).

• Effective social support also leads people to feel closer to those who provide it. Sen- sitive, responsive support from others increases our happiness, self-esteem, and optimism about the future (Feeney, 2004), and all of these have benefi- cial effects on our relationships. In marriages, happy spouses provide each other more support than distressed couples do (Verhofstadt et al., 2013), and higher levels of support when the partners are newly married are asso- ciated with a lower likelihood of divorce 10 years later (Sullivan et al., 2010).

• But some people are better providers of social support than others are. For instance, attachment styles matter. Secure people, who readily accept interdependent intimacy with others, tend to provide effective support that reassures and bolsters the recipient, and they do so for altruistic, compassionate reasons (Davila & Kashy, 2009). In contrast, insecure people are more self-serving, tending to provide help out of obligation or for the promise of reward. Moreover, their support tends to be less effective, either because (in the case of avoidant people) they provide less help than secure people do or because (in the case of anxious people) their help is intrusive and controlling (Collins et al., 2006). People are generally more satisfied with the support they receive when their partners have secure, rather than insecure, attach- ment styles (Kane et al., 2007).

In addition, people tend to provide better support when they are attentive and empathic and thus are able to tell what their partners need (Verhofstadt et al., 2010). People too rarely ask straightforwardly for help when they need it (Bohns & Flynn, 2010), so those who are better able to read a particular partner’s feelings tend to provide that partner more skill- ful support.

• Furthermore, the best support fits our needs and preferences. Not all social sup- port is wholly beneficial to its recipients. Even when supportive friends are well-intentioned and altruistic, their support may be of the wrong type or be too plentiful (Brock & Lawrence, 2009); their efforts to help may threaten our self-esteem or be intrusive, and unwelcome indebtedness can occur if we accept such help (McClure et al., 2014). So, social support sometimes comes with emotional costs, and for that reason, the best help is often invisible support that is subtly provided without fanfare and actually goes unnoticed by the recipient (Girme et al., 2013). When cohabiting couples kept diaries of the support they gave and received during a stressful period in which one of them was preparing for a bar examination, the support that was most effective in reducing the test taker’s anxiety was aid the partner provided that the test taker did not notice (Bolger et al., 2000). Sometimes, the best way to help a friend is to do so unobtrusively in a manner that does not add to his or her woes.

When support is visible, it is more effective when it fits the recipi- ent’s current needs and goals (Brock & Lawrence, 2010). Another study with frantic law students preparing for a bar exam found that material support—for instance, a partner cooking dinner—was helpful, but emo- tional support simply made the examinees more anxious (Shrout et al., 2006). On the other hand, elderly people with impaired vision may be annoyed by material support (especially when it makes them feel more helpless) but heartened by emotional support (Reinhardt et al., 2006). Evidently, there’s no sort of support that’s suitable for all situations; the type of help and assistance a friend will appreciate will depend on his or her current needs, your capabilities, and the present state of your friend- ship (Girme et al., 2014). We need to be alert to personal preferences and the particular circumstances if we are to provide effective support.

• Regardless of what support is offered, one of the most important patterns in studies of social support is that it’s not what people do for us but what we think they do for us that matters in the long run. The support we perceive is often only a rough match for the support we actually get (Lakey, 2013), and people become distressed when they believe that their partners are unsupportive whether or not their partners really are (Bar-Kalifa & Rafaeli, 2013). In fact, perceived support has more to do with our satisfaction with a partner than with the amount of aid he or she actually provides: When we’re content with our friends and lovers, we perceive them to be

supportive, but when we’re dissatisfied, we perceive them to be neglectful and unhelpful (Lemay & Neal, 2014). Our judgments aren’t totally unrealis- tic; the more support our partners provide us, the more supportive we usu- ally perceive them to be (Priem et al., 2009). Still, we’re more likely to notice and appreciate their aid and assistance when we trust them and we’re content with them, so that satisfaction may enhance perceived support at the same time that perceived support is increasing satisfaction (Collins et al., 2006). In general, then, our judgments of the aid we receive from others “are likely to possess both a kernel of truth and a shell of motivated elaboration” (Reis et al., 2004, p. 214).

• Finally, our personal characteristics also affect our perceptions of social support (Lakey, 2013). People who doubt others’ care and concern for them tend to take a biased, and undeservedly critical, view of others’ efforts to aid them. In particular, people who have insecure attachment styles judge the social support they receive to be less considerate and less helpful than do those who hold more favorable, more confident views of themselves and their relationships (Collins & Feeney, 2010). Remarkably, even when their friends are being genuinely supportive, insecure people are likely to consider their partners’ assistance and encouragement to be insufficient (Collins et al., 2010).

Overall, then, we rely on our friends and lovers for invaluable support, but the amount and quality of sustenance we (feel we) receive is affected by both our and our partners’ characteristics. The social support we perceive is also greatly influenced by the quality of our relationships; in general, partners who make us happy seem more supportive than do those with whom we share less satisfying friendships. People with roots in Western cultures are also more likely to ask for help when they need it from partners whom they trust and who are known to be responsive (Collins et al., 2010). (People from Eastern cultures are generally more reluctant to ask for help, but they’re just as pleased as Westerners to receive unsolicited support that is freely and thoughtfully pro- vided [Mojaverian & Kim, 2013].) On the whole, however, whether it is vis- ible or invisible, the best support is assistance that indicates that our partners attentively understand and care about—and thus are responsive—to our needs (Maisel & Gable, 2009).

Responsiveness

Each of the characteristics of a good friendship we’ve just encountered— respect, trust, capitalization, and social support—leave us feeling valued, understood, or cared for, so they are all tied to a last component of reward- ing intimacy that is probably the most important of them all (Reis, 2014): responsiveness, or attentive and supportive recognition of our needs and inter- ests. Most of the time, our friends are interested in who we are and what we have to say. They pay attention to us, and thereby communicate that they value their partnerships with us. They are also usually warm and supportive, and they seem to understand and appreciate us. And these are all reasons why they’re friends. The judgment that someone is attentive, respectful, caring, and supportive with respect to our needs and aspirations, which is known as perceived partner responsiveness, is powerfully rewarding,2 and we are drawn to those who lead us to feel valued, protected, and understood. (See Table 7.1.)

2 Indeed, perceived partner responsiveness is so influential, this is second time I’ve mentioned it. We encountered it as a key influence on self-disclosure back in chapter 5, on page 159.

Perceived partner responsiveness promotes intimacy (Maisel et al., 2008), encouraging self-disclosure, trust, and interdependency, and it is unquestion- ably good for relationships. Two people feel closer and more content with each other when they tune in and start looking out for each other’s needs (Canevello & Crocker, 2010). Moreover, when we generously attend to oth- ers, we tend to perceive that they are supportive and caring, too, and that also enhances our relationships (Debrot et al., 2012). And remarkably, being responsive to our partners is good for us as well as for them; students in fresh- men dorms who strove to understand and support their roommates adjusted better to college life as time went by (and got along better with their room- mates!) than did those who were less responsive (Canevello et al., 2013). There’s enormous value in the understanding, respect, and regard that’s offered by a responsive partner, and it’s clear that friends can supply us with potent interpersonal rewards.

The Rules of Friendship

Good friends can also be counted on to play by the rules. We don’t often explicate our expectations about what it means to be a friend, but most of us nevertheless have rules for relationships that are shared cultural beliefs about what behaviors friends should (or should not) perform. These stan- dards of conduct help relationships operate more smoothly. We learn the rules during childhood, and one of the things we learn is that when the rules are broken, disapproval and turmoil result. For instance, in a seminal study, Brit- ish researchers generated a large set of possible friendship rules and asked adults in Britain, Italy, Hong Kong, and Japan which of the rules they would endorse (Argyle & Henderson, 1984). Several rules for conducting friendships appeared to be universal, and they’re listed in Table 7.2. As you can see, they involve trust, capitalization, and support as well as other desirable aspects of intimacy.

In general, then, we expect good friends to be (Hall, 2012):

• trustworthy and loyal, having our best interests at heart;

• confidants with whom we can share our secrets;

• enjoyable and fun companions;

• similar to us in attitudes and interests; and

• helpful, providing material support when we need it.

(It’s also nice when a friend is attractive and financially well-off, but those are lesser considerations.) Women, in particular, have high standards for their friends (Felmlee et al., 2012); they expect more loyalty, self-disclosure, enjoy- ment, and similarity than men do (Hall, 2012). But all of us expect more from our friends than from less intimate companions, and the more closely we adhere to these rules, the closer and more satisfying our relationships are (Kline & Stafford, 2004). Romances are richer, too, involving more love, commitment, and sexual gratification, when the lovers value their friendship (VanderDrift et al., 2013b). So, people profit when they follow the rules of friendship, and in most cases when friend- ships fail, somebody hasn’t been following the rules (Argyle & Henderson, 1984).

7.2 FRIENDSHIP ACROSS THE LIFE CYCLE

We change as we grow and age, and our friendships do, too. For one thing, our attachment styles continue to be shaped by the experiences we encounter, and for most of us that’s a good thing: We’re likely to experience less anxiety about abandonment later in life than we do now (Chopik et al., 2013). And here’s more good news: You’re likely to be (even) more satisfied with your friend- ships in your elder years than you are now (Luong et al., 2011). Why is that? Let’s survey friendships over the life span to find out.

Childhood

Preschool children have rudimentary friendships in which they have favorite playmates. Thereafter, the enormous changes that children encounter as they grow and mature are mirrored in their friendships, which gradually grow richer and more complex (Howes, 2011). One important change involves chil- dren’s cognitive development; as they age, children are increasingly able to appreciate others’ perspectives and to understand their wishes and points of view. And accompanying this increasing cognitive sophistication are changes in the interpersonal needs that are preeminent as children age. According to Duane Buhrmester and Wyndol Furman (1986), these key needs are acceptance in the early elementary years, intimacy in preadolescence, and sexuality during the teen years. The new needs are added on top of the old ones at each stage, so that older children have more needs to satisfy than younger children do. And the successful resolution of each stage requires the development of spe- cific competencies that affect the way a child handles later stages; if those skills aren’t acquired, problems occur.

For instance, when children enter elementary school, the companionship of, and acceptance by, other children is important; those who are not suffi- ciently accepted by their peers feel excluded. Later, in preadolescence, children develop a need for intimacy that typically focuses on a friend who is similar to them in age and interests. This is when full-blown friendships characterized by extensive self-disclosure first emerge, and during this period, children develop the skills of perspective taking, empathy, and generosity that are the founda- tion for close adult relationships. Children who were not previously accepted by others may overcome their sense of isolation, but if they cannot, they experi- ence true loneliness for the first time. Thereafter, sexuality erupts, and the typi- cal adolescent develops an interest in the other sex. Most adolescents initially have difficulty satisfying their new emerging needs, but most manage to form sensitive, caring, and open sexual relationships later on.

Overall, then, theorists generally agree that our relationships change as we grow older. The rich, sophisticated ways in which adults conduct their friend- ships are years in the making. And to some degree, success in childhood rela- tionships paves the way for better adult outcomes. For instance, infants who are securely attached to their caregivers tend to be well liked when they start school; as a result, they form richer, more secure childhood friendships that leave them secure and comfortable with intimacy when they fall in love as young adults (Oriña et al., 2011). On the other hand, children who are rejected by their peers tend to encounter a variety of difficulties—such as dropping out of school, criminal arrests, and psychological maladjustment—more often than those who are well-liked (Wong & Schonlau, 2013). Peer rejection doesn’t necessarily cause such problems, but it might: Interventions that teach social skills enhance children’s acceptance by their peers, and that reduces their risk of later maladjustment (Waas & Graczyk, 1998).

Adolescence

There are other ways in which friendships change during the teen years. First, teens spend less and less time with their families and more and more time with their peers. An event-sampling study in Chicago found that children in fifth grade spent 35 percent of their time with family members whereas high school seniors were with their families only 14 percent of the time (Larson et al., 1996).

A second change is that adolescents increasingly turn to their friends for the satisfaction of important attachment needs (Fraley & Davis, 1997). Attachment theorists identify four components of attachment (Hazan & Zeifman, 1994): (a) proximity seeking, which involves approaching, staying near, or making con- tact with an attachment figure; (b) separation protest, in which people resist being separated from a partner and are distressed by separation from him or her; (c) safe haven, turning to an attachment figure as a source of comfort and support in times of stress; and (d) secure base, using a partner as a foundation for explora- tion of novel environments and other daring exploits. All of these components of attachment can be found in the relationships young children have with their parents, but, as they grow older, they gradually shift their primary attachments from their parents to their peers in a component-by-component fashion.

For instance, around the ages of 11 to 14, young adolescents often shift the location of their safe haven from their parents to their peers; if something upsets them, they’ll seek out their friends before they approach their parents. Indeed, about a third of older teens identify a peer (who is usually a romantic partner rather than a friend), not a parent, as their primary attachment figure (Rosenthal & Kobak, 2010). Peers gradually replace parents in people’s lives.

Young Adulthood

During their late teens and twenties, people enter young adulthood, a period in which a central task—according to Erik Erikson (1950), a historically prominent theorist—is the development of “intimacy versus isolation.” It’s at this age, Erikson believed, that we learn how to form enduring, committed intimate relationships.

You may be undertaking your quest for intimacy in a novel environment: a college some distance from home. Leaving home to go to school has probably influenced your friendships (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011), and you’re not alone if you haven’t seen much of your old high school friends lately. A year-long sur- vey of a freshman class at the University of Denver found that the friendships the students had at home tended to erode and to be replaced by new relation- ships on campus as the year went by (Shaver et al., 1985). This didn’t happen immediately, and the students’ satisfaction with their social networks was low- est in the fall after they arrived at college. But by the end of that first year, most people were again content with their social networks. They had made new friends, but it had taken some time.

What happens after college? In one impressive study, 113 young adults kept diaries of their social interactions on two separate occasions, once when they were still in college and again 6 years after they had graduated (Reis et al., 1993). Overall, the participants saw less of their friends each week once they were out of school; in particular, the amount of time spent with same-sex friends and groups of three or more people declined. The total amount of time spent with friends or lovers of the other sex increased, but the number of those partners decreased, especially for men. Still, just as developmental theory suggests, the average intimacy levels of the participants’ interactions increased during their twenties. After college, then, people tend to interact with fewer friends, but they have deeper, more interdependent relationships with the friends they have.

Midlife

What happens when people settle down with a romantic partner? It’s very clear: When people gain romantic partners, they spend less time with their families and friends. A pattern of dyadic withdrawal occurs; as people see more and more of a lover, they see less and less of their friends (Fehr, 1999). One study found that people spent an average of 2 hours each day with good friends when they were casually dating someone, but they saw their friends for less than 30 minutes per day once they became engaged (Milardo et al., 1983). Romantic couples do tend to have more contact with friends they have in com- mon, but this doesn’t offset declines in the total number of friends they have and the amount of time they spend with them (Wrzus et al., 2013).

The erosion of people’s friendships doesn’t stop once they get married. Friendships with members of the other sex are especially affected; people tend to see much less of friends who could be construed by a spouse to be potential romantic rivals (Werking, 1997). Still, even though they see less of their friends, spouses often have larger social networks than they did when they were single because they see a lot more of their in-laws (Milardo et al., 1983). (Make no mis- take about this, and beware if you don’t like your lover’s family: You will see a lot more of them if you marry!)

Thus, people’s social lives don’t wither away completely when they com- mit themselves to a spouse and kids, but the focus of their socializing does shift from their personal friends to family and friends they share with their spouses. In fact, it appears to be hard on a marriage when a husband and wife have no friends in common. As you can see in Figure 7.1, couples have more mar- ital problems when none of their personal friendships involve their spouses (Amato et al., 2007). Having some friends of one’s own does no harm, but hav- ing only exclusive friendships seems to be risky.

Old Age

Ultimately, elderly people have smaller social networks and fewer friends than younger people do (Wrzus et al., 2013). They’re not unsociable, they’re just more selective: They have just as many close friends as they did when they were younger, but they spend less time with casual friends and other periph- eral social partners (Fung et al., 2001).

A socioemotional selectivity theory argues that this change occurs because seniors have different interpersonal goals than younger people do (Löckenhoff & Carstensen, 2004). With a long life stretching out before them, young adults are presumed to pursue future-oriented goals aimed at acquiring information that will be useful later in life. (That’s presumably what you’re doing now if you’re in college.) With such ends in mind, young people seek relatively large social networks that include diverse social partners (and, often, hundreds of Facebook “friends”!). However, when people age and their futures seem more and more finite, they become oriented more toward the present than toward the future, and they emphasize emotional fulfillment to a greater extent (Fung & Carstensen, 2004). The idea is that as their time perspective shrinks, seniors aim for quality not quantity; they focus on a select group of satisfying friendships that are relatively free of conflict (Fingerman & Charles, 2010), work harder to maintain and enrich them (Lang et al., 2013), and let more casual partnerships lapse. Indeed, the theory predicts that anyone who considers his or her future to be limited will also choose to spend more time with a small number of close friends instead of a wider variety of more casual buddies—and that’s exactly what happens in younger adults whose time orientation is changed by con- tracting the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS (Carstensen et al., 1999). In general, socioemotional selectivity theory seems to be a reasonable explanation for age-related changes in sociability.

Finally, let’s note that—reflecting the vital role of intimacy in our lives— elderly people who have good friends live longer, healthier lives than do those who are less connected to others (Sabin, 1993). Friendships are invaluable for as long as we live.

7.3 DIFFERENCES IN FRIENDSHIP

Friendships don’t just differ across the life cycle; they also differ from person to person and from partner to partner. In this section of the chapter, we’ll consider how the nature of friendships is intertwined with gender and other individual differences.

Gender Differences in Same-Sex Friendships

Consider these descriptions of two same-sex friendships:

Wilma and Betty are very close friends. They rely on each other for support and counsel, and if they experience any problems in their romantic relation- ships, they immediately call each other, asking for, and getting, all the advice and consolation they need. Wilma and Betty feel that they know everything about each other.

Fred and Barney are very close friends. Often, they stay up half the night playing cards or tinkering with Fred’s beloved 1966 Chevy, which is constantly breaking down. They go everywhere together—to the bars, to ball games, and to work out. Barney and Fred feel they are the best of friends.

Do these two descriptions sound familiar? They might. A good deal of research shows that women’s friendships are usually characterized by emotional sharing and self-disclosure, whereas men’s friendships revolve around shared activities, companionship, and fun (Fehr, 1996; Marshall, 2010). It’s an oversimplification, but a pithy phrase coined years ago by Wright (1982) is still serviceable today: Women’s friendships are “face-to-face,” whereas men’s are “side-by-side.”3

3 This clever statement is oversimplified because it implies that women just talk and men just play, and of course that isn’t true. Women share enjoyable activities with their friends about as often as men do (Fehr, 1996). However, men are more reluctant than women to share their feelings and fears with their friends, so emotional sharing does distinguish women’s friendships from those of men, on average (Marshall, 2010).

This difference emerges from several specific patterns in same-sex friend- ships (Fehr, 1996):

• women spend more time talking to friends on the phone;

• men and women talk about different topics: Women are more likely to talk about relationships and personal issues, whereas men are more likely to talk about impersonal interests such as sports;

• women self-disclose more than men do;

• women provide their friends more emotional support than men do; and

• women express more feelings of affection in their friendships than men do.

Add all this up, and women’s same-sex friendships tend to be closer and more intimate than men’s are. The net result is that women typically have part- ners outside their romantic relationships to whom they can turn for sensitive, sympathetic understanding and support, but men often do not. For instance, ponder this provocative question (Rubin, 1986, p. 170): “Who would you turn to if you came home one night and your wife [or husband or lover] announced she [or he] was leaving you?” When research participants actually considered this question, nearly every woman readily named a same-sex friend, but only a few men did (Rubin, 1986). (In fact, most men could not come up with anyone to whom they could turn for solace if their lovers left them.)

Why are men’s same-sex friendships less intimate than women’s? Are men less capable of forming close friendships with each other, or are they just less willing? Usually, they are less willing; men seem to be fully capable of form- ing intimate friendships with other men when the circumstances support such closeness—but they generally choose not to do so because such intimacy is less socially acceptable among men than among women (Reis, 1998). And why is that? Cultural norms and gender roles appear to be the main culprits (Bank & Hansford, 2000). A traditional upbringing encourages men to be instrumen- tal, but not expressive,4 and (as we found in chapter 5), a person’s expres- sivity predicts how self-disclosing he or she will be. Androgynous men tend to have closer friendships than traditional, sex-typed men do, but more men are sex-typed than androgynous. Also, in keeping with typical gender roles, we put pressure on men to display more emotional constraint than we put on women. Cultural norms lead men to be more reluctant than women to express their worries and emotions to others, and gender differences in the intimacy of friendship disappear in societies (such as the Middle East) where expressive male friendships are encouraged (Reis, 1998).

4 Would you like a quick reminder about the nature of instrumentality and expressivity? Look back at page 25 in chapter 1.

Thus, the lower intimacy of men’s friendships usually isn’t due to an inability to share meaningful, close attachments to other men. Instead, it’s a choice that is supported by cultural pressures. Many men would probably have closer same-sex friendships if Western cultures did not discourage psychological inti- macy with other men.

Individual Differences in Friendship

Another personal characteristic that influences our social networks is sex- ual orientation. In a convenience sample5 of 1,415 people from across the United States, most heterosexual men and women did not have a close friend who was gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but most gays, lesbians, and bisexuals (or GLBs) did have friends who were straight (Galupo, 2009). Only about one in every six heterosexuals (knew that they) had GLB buddies, but about 80 percent of GLBs had close heterosexual friends. So, the friendship networks of straight people tend to be less diverse with regard to sexual orientation than those of GLBs. If heterosexuals are actually steering clear of GLBs, they may be mak- ing a mistake: The friendships of GLBs with heterosexuals are just as close and rewarding, on average, as their friendships with other GLBs (Ueno et al., 2009), and the more contact heteros have with GLBs, the more they like them (Merino, 2013).

5 Chapter 2: the gift that keeps on giving. See p. 47.

Finally, some of us think of ourselves mostly as independent, autonomous agents, and the qualities that are foremost in our self-concepts are the traits that distinguish us from others. In contrast, others of us define ourselves to a greater extent in terms of our relationships to others; our self-concepts emphasize the roles we fill and the qualities we display in our intimate partnerships. An intriguing individual difference, an interdependent self-construal, describes the extent to which we think of ourselves as interdependent, rather than inde- pendent, beings. For those of us with a highly interdependent self-construal, relationships are central features in our self-concepts, and we “tend to think and behave so as to develop, enhance, and maintain harmonious and close relationships” with others (Cross & Morris, 2003, p. 513). An interdependent self-construal makes someone a desirable friend (Morry et al., 2013); compared to those who are more independent, interdependent people better understand others’ opinions and values, and they strive to behave in ways that benefit others as well as themselves. Motivations supporting both independence and interdependence tend to be present in everyone, but Western cultures such as that of the United States tend to celebrate and emphasize independence and autonomy. So, highly interdependent self-construals are more common in other parts of the world (Cross et al., 2011).

7.4 FRIENDSHIP DIFFICULTIES

Now, in this last section of the chapter, let’s examine some of the states and traits that interfere with rewarding friendships. We’ll focus on two problems, shyness and loneliness, that are common but painful. As we’ll see, shy or lonely people usually want to develop close friendships, but they routinely behave in ways that make it difficult to do so.

These days, we may need every friend we’ve got. More than one out of every eight adult Americans lives alone—a proportion that’s doubled since 1960 (Wilson & Lamidi, 2013)—and intimate friendships are less common in the United States than they used to be, too (McPherson et al., 2006). The num- ber of people who say they have no close confidant of any sort has soared from only 10 percent in 1985 to 25 percent. One of every four adult Americans has no one to whom to turn for intimate counsel and support. Another 19 percent say they have only one confidant (who is often a spouse or a sibling), and, overall, the average number of intimate partners people have, including both close friends and lovers, has plummeted from three (in 1985) to two. Many of us have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook, but only rarely are they companions who offer the rich rewards of real intimacy. And once they leave school, only slightly more than half of all Americans (57 percent) have a close confidant to whom they are not related. Many Americans have none. And shyness and lone- liness make things even worse.

Shyness

Have you ever felt anxious and inhibited around other people, worrying about what they thought of you and feeling awkward in your conversations with them? Most of us have. Over 80 percent of us have experienced shyness, the syndrome that combines social reticence and inhibited behavior with nervous discomfort in social settings (Miller, 2009). Take a look at Table 7.3; when people are shy, they fret about social disapproval and unhappily anticipate unfavorable judgments from others. They feel self-conscious, uncomfortable, and inept (Arroyo & Harwood, 2011). As a result, they interact with others in an impov- erished manner. If they don’t avoid an interaction altogether, they behave in an inhibited, guarded fashion; they look at others less, smile less, speak less often, and converse less responsively (Ickes, 2009). Compared to people who are not shy, they manage everyday conversation poorly.

Shyness may beset almost anyone now and then. It’s especially common when we’re in unfamiliar settings, meeting attractive, high-status strangers for the first time, and it’s less likely when we’re on familiar turf interacting with old friends (Leary & Kowalski, 1995). However, some people are chronically shy, experiencing shyness frequently, and three characteristics distinguish them from people who are shy less often. First, people who are routinely shy fear negative evaluation from others. The possibility that others might dislike them is rarely far from their minds, and the threat of derision or disdain from others is more frightening to them than it is to most people. They worry about social disapproval more than the rest of us do (Miller, 2009). Second, they tend to doubt themselves. Poor self-regard usually accompanies chronic shyness, and shy people tend to have low self-esteem (Tackett et al., 2013). Finally, they feel less competent in their interactions with others, and sometimes with good rea- son: Overall, they have lower levels of social skill than do people who are not shy (Ickes, 2009).

This unwelcome combination of perceptions and behavior puts shy people between a rock and a hard place. They worry about what people are thinking of them and dread disapproval from others but don’t feel capable of making favorable impressions that would avoid such disapproval. As a result, they adopt a cautious, relatively withdrawn style of interaction that deflects inter- est and enthusiasm from others (Oakman et al., 2003). For instance, if they find an attractive woman looking at them, shy men won’t look back, smile, and say hello; instead, they’ll look away and say nothing (Ickes, 2009). Rewarding con- versations that would have ensued had the men been less shy sometimes do not occur at all.

The irony here is that by behaving in such a timid manner, people who are either temporarily or chronically shy often make the negative impressions on others that they were hoping to avoid in the first place. Instead of elicit- ing sympathy, their aloof, unrewarding behavior often seems dull or disinter- ested to others. Let’s think this through. Imagine that you’re at a dance, and some acquaintances are out on the floor moving to the music in a small mob. They call to you––”C’mon!”––urging you to join them, but because you’re not a confident dancer and you don’t want to look silly, you stay on the side- lines. You’d like to join them, but your concern over the evaluations you might receive is too strong, so you hang back and watch. The problem with your reti- cence, of course, is that instead of being sociable and encouraging everyone’s happy enthusiasm, you’re just standing there. Inside you may feel friendly, but you’re certainly not being playful, and to all appearances, you may seem awkward and a little dull. Indeed, it’s probably safe to say that you’re mak- ing a poorer impression on others standing on the sidelines than you would by joining the mob and dancing clumsily; nobody much cares how well you dance as long as you’re lively and lighthearted, but people do notice when you’re simply no fun.

In fact, shy behavior does not make a good impression on others, as Figure 7.2 shows. The timid, reserved, and hesitant behavior that characterizes shyness can seem aloof and unfriendly, and it is likely to be met by reactions from others that are less sociable and engaging than those that would follow from more gregari- ous behavior (Bradshaw, 2006). Over time, shy people may be more likely to encounter neglect and rejection than understanding and empathy, and such outcomes may reinforce their shyness. Indeed, shy people make new friends much more slowly than do those who are not shy, and the friendships they do have tend to be less satisfying and supportive, too (Asen- dorpf & Wilpers, 1998). As a result, they also tend to be lonelier than those who are not shy (Bradshaw, 2006). And these effects are consequential; on average, shy spouses are less happily married than are those who are less shy (Tackett et al., 2013).

Thus, shy behavior may make one’s shyness even worse, and obviously, it’s usually better to feel confident than shy in social life. Now, on occasion, shyness can be useful; when people really are confronted with novel situations and don’t know how to behave, brief bouts of shy caution may keep them from doing something inappropriate (Leary, 2010). More often, however, shy people run scared from the threat of social disapproval that hasn’t occurred and never will, so their shyness is an unnecessary and counterproductive burden (Miller, 2009). Formal programs that help people overcome chronic shyness often teach them a more positive frame of mind, helping them manage their anxiety about social evaluation. The programs also teach social skills, focusing on how to ini- tiate conversations and how to be assertive. Both positive thinking and effec- tive behavior are then rehearsed in role-playing assignments and other practice settings until the clients feel comfortable enough to try them on their own (Henderson & Zimbardo, 2010).

However, most shy people probably do not need formal training in interac- tion skills because they do just fine when they relax and quit worrying about how they’re being judged. If you’re troubled by shyness now, you may make better impressions on others if you actually care less about what they think. Evidence for this possibility comes from an intriguing study by Mark Leary (1986), who asked people to meet and greet a stranger in a noisy environment that was said to simulate a crowded singles bar. Leary created a multi-track tape of overlapping conversations, three different songs, radio static, and party noise (such as laughing and yelling)––it was definitely “noise”––and played it at a mildly obnoxious level as each couple conversed. Importantly, the tape was always played at the same volume, but some people were told that the noise was so loud that it would probably interfere with their conversation and make it hard for them to have a nice chat, whereas others were told that the noise was soft enough that it wouldn’t be a problem. Once these expectations were in place, people who were either shy or not shy were left alone with a stranger––a setting that is ordinarily threatening to shy people. Leary monitored the heart rates of his participants to track their anxiety and arousal, and Table 7.4 shows what he found. When the noise was “soft” and there wasn’t a good excuse for their interactions to go poorly, shy people exhibited considerably more arousal than normal people did; their heart rates increased 3 times as much, which is typical among those who are shy (Shimizu et al., 2011). Even worse, they looked obviously shy and uncomfortable to people who later watched video- tapes of their conversations. On the other hand, when they had an excuse—the impossibly “loud” noise—that lowered everyone’s expectations, they behaved as if they weren’t shy at all. They exhibited a normal, moderate increase in heart rate as their interactions began and gave observers no clue that they were usually shy.

Interestingly, if they couldn’t be blamed if their interactions went badly, the shy people in Leary’s (1986) study stayed relatively relaxed and conducted their conversations without difficulty. When the threat of personal failure was removed from an upcoming interaction, their shyness disappeared. Their shyness, then, was not the result of some persistent lack of skill; it depended on the context in which interaction occurred. Similarly, shy people are much more relaxed when they interact with others relatively anonymously and at their own pace online (Weidman et al., 2012). But add webcams to the mix, so shy people can see and be seen by their online partners, and their reticence returns; their self-disclosure drops and their shyness is again apparent (Brunet & Schmidt, 2007).

If their shyness comes and goes depending on whether others can see them, people (and this probably includes you if you feel shy) don’t need addi- tional training in basic social skills. What they do need is greater calm and self-confidence (Arroyo & Harwood, 2011), and although that may not be easy to come by, shy people should consider the alternative: They’re not winning friends and influencing people by acting shy, so what do they have to lose by trusting themselves and expecting interactions to go well? If you’re shy, instead of thinking about yourself the next time you make a new acquaintance, simply try to find out as much as you can about the other person.6 Things will prob- ably go better than you expect (Kashdan et al., 2011).

6 The box on page 221 has some tips on how to proceed.

Loneliness

It’s one thing to feel anxious and timid in social settings and another to feel dis- satisfied, deprived, and distressed because you have no intimate friends. The unpleasant boredom, sadness, and desperation of loneliness occur when there is an unhappy discrepancy between the number and quality of partnerships we want and those we have (de Jong Gierveld et al., 2006). Loneliness isn’t the same as being alone; we can often feel very content in complete solitude, at least for a while (Leary et al., 2003). Instead, loneliness occurs when we want more, or more satisfying, connections with others than we presently have (Mel- lor et al., 2008). Thus, if your relationships with others are all rather superficial, it’s possible to be lonely even if you’re surrounded by others and have lots of Facebook “friends.”

Loneliness has different facets. Theorist Robert Weiss (1973) was the first to suggest that we can suffer either social isolation, being dissatisfied because we lack a social network of friends and acquaintances, or emotional isolation, being lonely because we lack affection and emotional support from at least one intense relationship (Liu & Rook, 2013). Both elements of loneliness can be found on the UCLA Loneliness Scale, the measure most widely used in research on loneliness in adults (see Table 7.5). The scale has three themes (Hawkley et al., 2005). The first is isolation from others. Lonely people feel alone and less in contact with others than they want to be. They also feel less close connection to others than they wish to have. They perceive their relationships with others to be less mean- ingful and close than they wish they were. Finally, loneliness also results from experiencing too little social connection to people in general. Lonely people feel that they have insufficient ties to a network of friends and playmates, so they get too little pleasure and social support from their interactions with others.

People suffer when they are poorly connected to others. Back in chapter 1, I suggested that humans have a need to belong, and loneliness is an example of what happens when the need goes unsatisfied. Compared to those with richer, more satisfying friendships, lonely people have chronically higher blood pres- sure and higher levels of stress hormones in their blood. They sleep more poorly and their immune systems don’t work as well (Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2013). And over time, the wear and tear of loneliness may have very noticeable effects on general well-being; in both the United States (Luo et al., 2012) and the United Kingdom (Steptoe et al., 2013), lonely people over the age of 50 are more likely to die in the next 6 years than are those with richer connections to others. When it is prolonged, loneliness may have very deleterious effects on our health.

The good news, however, is that loneliness is often a temporary state. A period of separation from one’s social network can cause anyone distress, but it may be short lived, ending in reunion or the development of new friendships. The bad news is that some of the personal characteristics that are associated with loneliness are lasting traits that change only gradually—if at all—over time. For one thing, loneliness is heritable. That is, about half of the variation in loneliness from person to person (48 percent) is due to genetic influences that are inherited at birth (Boomsma et al., 2005). Some of us are literally born being more likely than others to experience bouts of loneliness in life. Indeed, people’s personalities predict how lonely they will turn out to be; higher levels of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are all linked to lower loneliness, whereas higher neuroticism increases the chances that we will be lonely (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009).

Loneliness also varies with other attributes that are somewhat more changeable. Insecure attachment is one. Both dimensions of attachment— anxiety about abandonment and avoidance of intimacy—are related to loneli- ness, and the less anxious and less avoidant people are, the less lonely they tend to be (Givertz et al., 2013). Self-esteem is another. Consistent with the sociometer model of self-esteem,7 people who don’t have satisfying, fulfilling connections to others tend not to like themselves very much: Lonely people tend to have low self-esteem (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009).

7 Need a reminder about the sociometer model? Take a look back at page 30.

Moreover, men are lonelier than women are on average (Pinquart, 2003), but a lot depends on whether they are currently close to a female partner. Because women often have close friendships with other women, they usu- ally enjoy plenty of intimacy in their lives even when they’re not dating anyone. Heterosexual men, on the other hand, share relatively superficial interactions with other men, and they tend to really open up only when they’re with a woman. Thus, most men seem to be dependent on women to avoid being lonely in a way that women are not dependent on them in return (as Table 7.6 shows).

It’s actually more correct, however, to say that it’s macho men who need women to keep from being lonely. One of the psychological ingredients that promotes meaningful, fulfilling interactions with others is expressivity,8 and the qualities that make someone warm, sensitive, and kind appear to make it less likely that he or she will be lonely (Wheeler et al., 1983). Women tend to be high in expressivity, and that’s a primary reason why they tend to be less lonely than men. But androgynous men are also high in expressivity, and unlike their more traditional macho brothers, they are not more lonely than women are. So, the global difference between men and women in loneliness appears to be a gen- der difference rather than a sex difference. People who are low in expressivity (and that includes most men) tend toward loneliness when they are not paired with an expressive partner who brings intimacy into their lives, but many men (about a third of them) are just as expressive as most women (Bem, 1993), and they do not rely on women to keep from being lonely.

8 You’ve probably got this one down, but it’s on pages 24–25 if you want to review it.

Finally, when people are lonely, they’re not much fun. Their distress and desperation is evident in negative attitudes toward others (Tsai & Reis, 2009). Iron- ically, lonely people tend to mistrust and dislike the very people from whom they seek acceptance and regard. Perhaps as a result, their interactions are usu- ally drab and dull. Lonely people are slow to respond to things that are said to them, they don’t ask many questions, and they read rejection into innocent utterances from others, so they’re not much fun to chat with. In addition, they don’t self-disclose much; their conversation is usually shallow and inconse- quential, so it’s hard for them to develop the intimacy they seek (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009).

Unfortunately, none of this escapes notice. The cynical outlook and dull, halfhearted manner of lonely people often elicit negative reactions from oth- ers, who typically feel that they don’t know or like them very much (Tsai & Reis, 2009). Loneliness is thus similar to shyness in being potentially self- perpetuating, but it probably has more potent effects. Whereas shy behavior is essentially innocuous and aloof, lonely behavior is more corrosive and obnox- ious. Shy people just keep their distance, but lonely people irritate and annoy us. On college campuses, lonely students have just as many interactions with their peers as anyone else, but they experience fewer positive outcomes such as support and affection and more negative outcomes such as conflict and dis- trust (Hawkley et al., 2005). Thus, even when they are surrounded by other people, lonely people often behave in off-putting ways that can make their loneliness worse.

To add insult to injury, loneliness can also lead to depression (Vanhalst et al., 2012). Depression is a broader, more global state of dissatisfaction and distress than loneliness is—loneliness emerges from interpersonal troubles whereas depression stems from losses and setbacks of all sorts (Weeks et al., 1980)—but each can fuel the other, and being depressed makes it even harder to behave in effective ways that are inviting to others (Baddeley et al., 2013). In addition to being gloomy and glum, depressed people engage in an obnoxious pattern of excessive reassurance seeking: They persistently probe for assurances that others like and accept them but doubt the sincerity of such declarations when they are received (Haeffel et al., 2007). Discontent and anxious, they con- tinue to seek more convincing comfort and gradually wear out their partners’ patience (Lemay & Cannon, 2012).

None of this is pleasant. What are lonely people to do? If you’re lonely now, the last few pages may seem pretty pessimistic, but all is certainly not lost. Some people are more likely than others to encounter loneliness, but the situations we encounter are clearly influential, too (Larose et al., 2002). Adverse circumstances can cause anyone to become lonely—but circumstances change, and it’s important to remain hopeful. Loneliness need not last. Indeed, when young adults were hypnotized and asked to think of experiences involving friendship and belongingness, they were less shy, more sociable, happier, and less lonely than they were when they focused on feelings of loneliness (Cacioppo et al., 2006). One’s outlook can make a tremendous difference.

In particular, college freshmen overcome loneliness more readily when they attribute their distress to unstable, short-lived influences rather than to lasting deficiencies in either themselves or others (Cutrona, 1982). Judging one’s loneliness to be the result of temporary or changeable difficulties offers the optimistic possibility that things will improve, and hopefulness is more likely to cure loneliness than dour pessimism is (Newall et al., 2009). Further- more, because loneliness emerges from the discrepancy between the partner- ships we want and those we’ve got, lonely people should be careful not to set their sights too high. For instance, students who move away from home to go to school are usually lonely for a while; it comes with the (new, unfamiliar) ter- ritory (Weeks et al., 1980). But over the ensuing year, those who simply seek to make new friends usually succeed and become less lonely, whereas those who hunt for a compelling romance are usually disappointed and remain dejected (Cutrona, 1982).

To overcome loneliness then, we should seek new friendships, not romances, and to do that we need to be friendly. If you’re lonely now, watch out for any sour, self-defeating attitudes (Masi et al., 2011). Are you beginning to think that people are generally selfish, shallow, and uncaring? That nega- tive outlook is almost certainly making you less charming, and it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy: What you expect may be what you get. Indeed, if you take a more positive approach—focusing on others’ good qualities, expect- ing them to be pleasant, and patiently recognizing that friendship takes time— you’ll probably enjoy more rewarding interactions with others.

7.5 FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Don and Teddi became best friends when they went through graduate school together. They started their studies the same year and took the same classes, and they worked together on several projects outside of class. They learned that they were both conscientious and clever, and they came to respect and trust each other completely. Each learned the other’s most intimate secrets. They also had great fun together. They were both nonconformists, and they shared a wry and offbeat sense of humor; they would frequently laugh at jokes that nobody else seemed to get. The night that Teddi finished her doctoral dissertation, they got drunk and almost had sex, but they were interrupted and the moment passed. And soon thereafter, they graduated and took jobs in different parts of the country; he moved to California and she went to Minnesota. Now, 6 years later, they have both married, and they see each other only every year or so at professional meetings.

Having read this chapter, what do you think the future holds for Don and Teddi’s friendship? Why?

7.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY

The Nature of Friendship

Our friendships are indispensable sources of pleasure and support.

Attributes of Friendships. Close friendships are genuinely intimate rela- tionships that involve affection, communion, and companionship, but they are usually less passionate and committed than romances are. They involve:

• Respect. We usually admire our friends and hold them in high esteem.

• Trust. We confidently expect benevolent treatment from our friends.

• Capitalization. Friends usually respond eagerly and energetically to our happy outcomes, sharing our delight and reinforcing our pleasure.

• Social support. This comes in various forms, including affection, advice, and material assistance. Some people are better providers of social support than others are, and the best support fits our needs and preferences. Invisible support that goes unnoticed by the recipient is sometimes very beneficial, but perceived support is very important; it’s not what people do for us but what we think they do for us that matters in the long run.

• Responsiveness. Friends provide attentive and supportive recognition of our needs and interests, and perceived partner responsiveness is powerfully rewarding.

The Rules of Friendship. Friendships also have rules, shared beliefs within a culture about how friends should (or should not) behave.

Friendship across the Life Cycle

Childhood. As children grow and mature, their friendships gradually grow richer and more complex. The sophisticated ways in which adults con- duct their friendships are years in the making.

Adolescence. During the teen years, adolescents increasingly turn to their friends for the satisfaction of important attachment needs.

Young Adulthood. After college, people tend to interact with fewer friends, but they have deeper relationships with the friends they have.

Midlife. Dyadic withdrawal occurs as people see more of a lover; they see less of their friends (but a lot more of their in-laws).

Old Age. Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that seniors aim for qual- ity, not quantity, in their friendships.

Differences in Friendship

Gender Differences in Same-Sex Friendships. Women’s friendships are usually characterized by emotional sharing and self-disclosure, whereas men’s friendships revolve around shared activities, companionship, and fun.

Individual Differences in Friendship. Most gays and lesbians have het- erosexual friends, but most heterosexuals do not (think that they) have gay or lesbian friends. Interdependent self-construals lead people to emphasize their relationships rather than their independence.

Friendship Difficulties

Shyness. Shy people fear social disapproval and behave timidly, often making the negative impressions that they were hoping to avoid. Many shy people interact comfortably with others when they are given an excuse for things to go poorly, so they need increased self-confidence instead of better social skills.

Loneliness. Dissatisfaction and distress occur when we want more, or more satisfying, connections with others, and both social isolation and emotional isolation may be involved. Loneliness results from genetic influences, insecure attachment, low self-esteem, and low expressivity. It is associated with negative attitudes and drab interactions that are unappealing to others. Hopeful attributions and reasonable expectations are helpful in overcoming loneliness.

未完待续，持续更新中

The series continues to be updated...

Chapter 1 The Building Blocks of Relationships （I）【121777】

Chapter 1 The Building Blocks of Relationships （II）【152979】

Chapter 2 Research Methods 【596719】

Chapter 3 Attraction （I）【431743】

Chapter 3 Attraction （II）【213329】

Chapter 4 Social Cognition（I）【607185】

Chapter 4 Social Cognition（II）【388771】

Chapter 5 Communication (I) 【261909】

Chapter 5 Communication (II) 【230707】

Chapter 6 Interdependency 【228653】

Chapter 7 Friendship 【166249】

Chapter 8 Love 【240092】

Chapter 9 Sexuality 【598969】

Chapter 10 Stresses and Strains

Chapter 11 Conflict

Chapter 12 Power and Violence

Chapter 13 The Dissolution and Loss of Relationships

Chapter 14 Maintaining and Repairing Relationships