Childhood and Adolescence 9anxiety have fewer friends overall, although they are as likely as their peers to have
a best friend (Scharfstein, Alfano, Beidel, & Wong, 2011). Notably, however, the
friends of children with a genetic disposition for anxiety are likely to be similarly
anxious, and affiliation with anxious friends is related to increased anxiety symp-
toms (Poirier et al., 2015).
Lower overall friendship quality is associated with higher anxiety, with these
links stronger for girls than boys (La Greca & Lopez, 1998). Longitudinal research
that followed adolescents across a school year suggested a reciprocal relationship
between friendship quality and anxiety, with higher friendship quality predicting
lower anxiety several months later, and higher anxiety predicting lower friendship
quality over time (Vernberg, Abwender, Ewell, & Beery, 1992). More recent studies
have demonstrated the importance of considering negative and positive friendship
qualities separately. Higher negative friendship qualities (e.g., conflict) are associ-
ated with elevated anxiety in both children and adolescents. Lower positive quali-
ties (e.g., intimacy) are related to higher anxiety in adolescents, but for girls only
among children (Greco & Morris, 2005; La Greca & Harrison, 2005). Thus, friend-
ships with high positive features appear to provide protection against anxiety for
girls by middle childhood, but not for boys until adolescence, which may reflect
gender and developmental differences in the value ascribed to friendships (Rose &
Rudolph, 2006). High negative friendship qualities, however, are consistently
related to anxiety. Notably, Poirier and colleagues (2015) observed an increased
risk for anxiety symptoms in best friends only when the negative features of the
friendship were perceived as high. This suggests that it is particularly important to
teach conflict- management skills to reduce negative experiences within friendships
and to decrease the likelihood of anxiety symptoms.
Self- Esteem
Given that the functions of friendship include validation and emotional support, it
is not surprising that children involved in friendships, and particularly high- quality
friendships, are more apt to experience high self- esteem. Interestingly, Franco and
Levitt (1998) found that within a middle childhood sample, friendship quality pre-
dicted self- esteem after accounting for the contribution of the family. This likely
reflects the fact that friendships involve the voluntary association of equals who
enhance feelings of being valued as individuals, whereas support from family may
be viewed as obligatory.
Consistent with Sullivan’s (1953) theory, both peer acceptance and friendship
significantly predict self- esteem in middle childhood (Vandell & Hembree, 1994),
but in adolescence, friendship is a stronger predictor of self- esteem than is peer
acceptance (Bishop & Inderbitzen, 1995). Also demonstrating that friendships
become increasingly important in adolescence, Buhrmester (1990) observed that
friendship intimacy was more strongly predictive of self- esteem in adolescents