Evaluations of communication skills as predictors of peer acceptance in a group living situation

Abstract

This paper develops the hypothesis that holding age‐ and gender‐typical conceptions of friendship, conceptions expressed in evaluations of several communication skills, is an important determinant of interpersonal acceptance by peers. It was hypothesized that college students who highly value the affectively oriented communication skills of friends would experience higher levels of peer acceptance than those who value nonaffectively oriented skills. However, it was anticipated that gender would mediate the relationship between valuing affectively oriented skills and interpersonal acceptance. Participants (residents of two fraternities and two sororities) responded to a questionnaire on the perceived importance of eight communication skills in friends, provided self‐reports about experienced loneliness, and completed interviews on sociometric assessments of peer acceptance. Correlational analyses detected weak but significant associations between valuing affectively oriented communication skills and indice...