The Psychology of Friendship - Oxford University Press (2016)

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Friendship in Childhood and Adolescence

Cynthia A. Erdley and Helen J. Day

Children’s relationships with peers play a critical role in their psychological adjust-
ment (Parker & Asher, 1987). Early studies on children’s peer relationships focused
primarily on the role of peer acceptance, or the degree to which the peer group likes
a child. In recent decades, however, increased attention has been given to the role
of friendship, defined as a close, mutual, dyadic relationship (Hartup, 1996). Peer
group acceptance and friendship are related: For example, better accepted children
are more likely to have friends (Nangle, Erdley, Newman, Mason, & Carpenter,
2003). Nevertheless, these aspects of peer experience make unique contributions
to children’s adjustment (Parker & Asher, 1993).
Friendship relations are distinct from other relationships. A  meta- analysis by
Newcomb and Bagwell (1995) revealed the many ways in which children’s interac-
tions with friends versus nonfriends differ. Children are more positively engaged
with friends than nonfriends, with more smiling, talking, sharing, cooperating, and
helping, and they show more effective task performance with friends. Although
children are just as apt to engage in conflict with friends as with nonfriends, con-
flict resolution differs:  Friends are more likely to use negotiation and to focus on
preserving the relationship, whereas nonfriends are more apt to stand firm or use
power assertion, resulting in less equitable outcomes. In addition, friendships
are characterized by more equality and less intense competition and domination
compared with relationships with nonfriends. Finally, friends tend to be similar in
various demographic and behavioral characteristics, including age, race, attitudes
toward school, and involvement in delinquency (Boivin & Vitaro, 1995; Dishion,
Andrews, & Crosby, 1995). Indeed, this similarity in characteristics, referred to as
homophily, plays an important role as children and adolescents select their friends
(Dishion et  al., 1995). Moreover, through socialization processes, friends tend to
become even more similar to one another over time (Dishion, Spracklen, Andrews,
& Patterson, 1996; Giletta et al., 2011).
In this chapter, we begin by discussing a theoretical perspective that helps explain
why friendships are so important in the lives of children and adolescents. We next