Long-Lasting Friendships 269providing assurance and supporting the friend (e.g., try to make the other person feel
good about who they are and support each other when one of you is going through a tough
time) and the friendship (e.g., let each other know you want the relationship to last in
the future). The third factor included behaviors related to “openness” (accounting
for 6.63% of the variance) and included behaviors related to self- disclosure (e.g.,
share your private thoughts) and general conversation (e.g., have intellectually stimu-
lating conversations). The final factor was labeled interaction (accounting for 4.61%
of the variance) and included behaviors and activities that the friends engaged in
jointly (e.g., visit each other’s homes and celebrate special occasions together). This fac-
tor structure was similar for both males and females and was subsequently reval-
idated with confirmatory factor analyses and shortened to 20 items (5 items per
scale). The factors on the shorter scale demonstrated adequate scale structure in
the confirmatory factor analysis and also acceptable internal reliability (Cronbach
alphas ranging from .75 to .95). The subscales are also positively intercorrelated (r’s
ranging from .12 to .61).
These four key friendship behaviors are theoretically consistent with the mainte-
nance typologies that Fehr (1996) identified based on a literature review of friend-
ships. In that review Fehr suggested key strategies of self- disclosure, providing
support and assurance, maintaining levels of rewards, and shared time as central
for maintaining friendships. These behaviors also share similarities to the types of
behaviors that are used to maintain romantic relationships. Based on exploratory
factor analysis, Stafford and Canary (1991) identified five relationship mainte-
nance strategies that were important for maintaining romantic relationships. These
behaviors included positivity, assurances, openness, shared tasks, and social net-
works. This suggests that being positive, providing assurances, and support as well
as self- disclosure are important for maintaining a variety of types of relationships.
In contrast, while socially interacting is important for maintaining the friendships,
romantic relationships also focus on interactions that involved shared tasks and
social networks. Thus, while there are similarities of maintenance behaviors across
relationship types, it is also important to realize that different types of relationships
will require different maintenance behaviors.
Use of maintenance behaviors depends on a number of characteristics includ-
ing the sex of the individuals in the relationship and the status of the relationship.
In regard to friendship status, Oswald and colleagues (2004) found that people
reported engaging in more of all of the maintenance behaviors in best friendships
than in close or casual friendships. People also reported engaging in more mainte-
nance behaviors for close friendships than for casual friendships. Consistent results
have been found across numerous studies. For example, among newly formed col-
lege friendships, close friends engaged in more maintenance behaviors of posi-
tivity, assurances, task sharing, social networking, banter, routine contact, and
computer- mediated communication than casual friendships (McEwan & Guerrero,
2012). Binder and colleagues (2012) compared “core friendships” with “significant