When Friends Disappoint: Boys’ and Girls’ Responses to Transgressions of Friendship Expectations

2011/11/22 by Julie Paquette MacEvoy, Steven R Asher, Steven R. Asher · 27 citations
Psychology · #Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics

paper · doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01685.x

Abstract

In this study, the prevailing view that girls are pervasively more skilled in their friendships than boys was challenged by examining whether girls respond more negatively than boys when a friend violates core friendship expectations. Fourth- and fifth-grade children (n = 267) responded to vignettes depicting transgressions involving a friend's betrayal, unreliability, or failure to provide support or help. Results indicated that girls were more troubled by the transgressions, more strongly endorsed various types of negative relationship interpretations of the friend's actions, and reported more anger and sadness than did boys. Girls also endorsed revenge goals and aggressive strategies just as much as boys. These findings lead to a more complex view of boys' and girls' friendship competencies.

Citations

• Friendship and friendship quality in middle childhood: Links with peer group acceptance and feelings of loneliness and social dissatisfaction.

Cited by

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• Relationship dissolution in the friendships of emerging adults: How, when, and why?
• “I wanted to hurt her”: Children’s and adolescents’ experiences of desiring and seeking revenge in their own peer conflicts
• Through thick and thin?: Young adults’ implicit beliefs about friendship and their reported use of dissolution and maintenance strategies with same‐gender friends
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• A randomized trial of a classroom intervention to increase peers' social inclusion of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. [europepmc]
• The development of human female competition: allies and adversaries. [europepmc]
• Depressive Symptoms and Conversational Self-Focus in Adolescents' Friendships. [europepmc]
• Sex differences in human gregariousness. [europepmc]
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• Spotting Loneliness at School: Associations between Self-Reports and Teacher and Peer Nominations. [europepmc]
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• Peer audience effects on children's vocal masculinity and femininity. [europepmc]
• Functions of Aggression and Peer Likeability in Elementary School Children Across Time. [europepmc]
• New perspectives on the evolution of women's cooperation. [europepmc]
• Social relationship provisions and loneliness in school: Child- and classroom-level effects. [europepmc]
• Early Adolescents' Social Goals in Peer Conflict Situations: A Mixed Methods Study. [europepmc]
• Associations between adolescent friends' responses during problem talk and depressive symptoms. [europepmc]
• Quantifying Toxic Friendship: A Preliminary Investigation of a Measure of Victimization in the Friendships of Adolescents. [europepmc]
• The adverse dyadic friendship (ADF): An exploratory retrospective view of female adolescents. [europepmc]
• With or without you: Understanding friendship dissolution from childhood through young adulthood. [europepmc]

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