Judgments of the Features of Friendship among Early Adolescent Boys and Girls

Abstract

Sex differences in children's impressions of the features of friendship were examined in a study of 201 fourth-grade and seventh-grade boys and girls. The subjects read descriptions of hypothetical pairs of boys and hypothetical pairs of girls, and rated each pair on a five-point scale according to the likelihood that they were friends. The characters in each dyad were described as being either similar or not similar to each other, helpful or not helpful to one another, and intimate or not intimate with each other. Both boys and girls made judgements about dyads of each sex, thus making it possible to assess differences between boys' and girls' friendship conceptions in general, and to consider differences in the ratings of the hypothetical boy dyads versus hypothetical girl dyads made by raters of both sexes. An examination of the subjects' ratings revealed (a) differences between the ratings of the similar and nonsimilar pairs, the helpful and nonhelpful pairs, and the intimate and nonintimate pairs, (b) stronger effects for intimacy among older subjects than the younger subjects, (c) stronger effects for intimacy in the ratings of the sentences with girl characters relative to those with boy characters, (d) stronger effects for similarity with the boy dyads than the girl dyads among the older subjects, and (e) interactions among the friendship features. These results are discussed in regard to the relation between social cognition and social behavior, and according to the nature of sex differences in friendship during early adolescence.